


Silver Shadow Snake

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Children of the Sun [10]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Familiars, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-01-29 15:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 58,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12634032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Harry wasn’t sure when he first started noticing the odddoublenessof Professor Quirrell’s familiar, but he had no doubt it was there. And since no one else was doing anything about it, he thought it was probably up to him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of a longer arc in the Children of the Sun series that will be updated on Saturdays. You should definitely make sure that you've read all the previous stories in the series first.

Harry was watching Professor Quirrell again. No one else ever seemed to do that. They were disgusted by the way he spoke, or the way he smelled, with all the garlic under his turban, and they would just laugh and look away.

But Harry didn’t think anyone else had watched long enough to notice what _he_ saw. Quirrell’s familiar, a bronze rabbit, always stayed near him, crouched next to him on the table and nibbling from his plate. Harry thought that the rabbit was probably like Golden; she didn’t _need_ to eat, since she could just live on her wizard’s magic, but she wanted to, as a kind of reassurance. Golden ate because he liked the taste and they were in a different place now.

Harry knew that Golden hadn’t eaten a lot around him when they were young because he hadn’t wanted to take the food that the Dursleys would give Harry. But now that they were at Hogwarts, he ate all the time.

Not like Quirrell’s rabbit, though, whose name was Alanna. She was always flinching, even harder than the professor himself did.

And Golden didn’t have a _smaller_ familiar inside him, either.

Harry had actually thought it was a worm at first, but he’d asked around a little under the guise of being a wide-eyed child, and making friends. And he _did_ want to make friends. He thought that made people answer him honestly. The other part of it was that they all wanted to talk to someone with a golden familiar, because they thought he was going to do great things and they wanted to be part of them.

Harry planned to put a stop to _that_ as soon as he could.

Anyway. Familiars didn’t get worms, or other animal diseases. Most of the time, the only thing that could kill them was when their wizard or witch died. On occasion, they could get corrupted if their person practiced enough Dark Arts, but even that was rare and took insanity or a lack of control.

So there was no reason that Harry knew of for the small silver snake that floated, transparent, near Alanna’s neck and ears.

But Harry thought that both she and Quirrell were in trouble. And he intended to help.

*

Narcissa sat back from the letter, and nodded slowly. Even for a child as skilled in subtlety as her Draco was, it made a pretty trap. And while Harry Potter was certainly powerful, nothing she had heard about him pointed to any sense of subtlety.

She would offer him a mentor, she thought as she reached down and stroked Venus’s fur, making her rumble with contentment. She would offer him kindness. If he didn’t know his own place at the top of the hierarchy, or at least didn’t intuitively understand it, that would be all the harder to resist. He would be unused to thinking of himself as the _dispenser_ of good things, and would position himself as beneficiary.

At the same time, Narcissa would make sure that he would have no reason to think of himself as dominant over Draco. She would plant a few doubts about the natural powers of golden familiars. About the _rightness_ of using Parselmouth to command reptilian ones like Kali. And she would teach him that the Malfoys were right, and Draco the natural leader for him to follow.

 _By all rights, it should have been me gifted with a golden familiar,_ she thought idly as she stood up to post the letter.

But it did not matter. After the snare was spun, she would have the use of one as an extension of her will.

*

Harry went to Professor Quirrell first. Golden reared up beside him and examined Alanna with interest. That made Alanna shriek and dive behind the professor. Harry winced.

“Sorry for that, Professor Quirrell,” he said. “But I wanted to ask you about the snake that Alanna has inside her.”

Professor Quirrell had been reaching back to pet his rabbit. But now he recoiled and got papers all over the floor from the way his hand was swinging. Harry frowned. Professor Quirrell looked as scared as Dudley did when Golden reared up and swatted him away with his tail. But Dudley couldn’t _see_ Golden. Harry knew Professor Quirrell had to be able to see the snake.

“W-what are y-you t-talking about, M-Mr. P-P-P-Potter?”

“That snake, right there,” Harry said, and pointed at the shadow that was inside Alanna’s ears right now. “It sort of moves around, but I can always see it. It’s silver, and she’s bronze, so I thought maybe she was sick. I could try to talk to it?” he offered. Now that he knew he was a Parselmouth, because Draco and Neville and some other people had explained it to him, he knew he might be good at talking to snakes.

Professor Quirrell only stared at him as if Harry had done something horrible, before he shook his head abruptly and grabbed up Alanna protectively. “No! It’s nothing!”

“But, sir—”

“She’s _fine_! You will not threaten my familiar, Potter!”

Harry sighed. Professor Quirrell was probably one of those people who thought Harry liked being at the top of the hierarchy and would threaten anyone who didn’t have a golden familiar themselves. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just thought she was sick and I wanted to help heal her.”

“Out of my classroom! This _instant_!”

Harry frowned and left, with Golden crawling beside him. Something was bothering him, but it wasn’t until they were in Herbology and Neville was showing him the right way to pick up a Burning Bush that he realized what it was.

Professor Quirrell hadn’t stuttered on those last few words at _all_.

*

“Did you get the letter from my mother?”

A few days had gone by without Harry saying anything, and Draco _had_ to know. Mother had written to him that she would write to Harry—or Potter, because she called him that. She said that he needed a mother, and Draco knew there was no one better in the whole world than _his_ Mother.

But if Harry didn’t say anything, that might mean he didn’t agree. And Draco had started dancing up and down so much, or juggling his leg back and forth, when he was thinking about it, that Kali had started to hiss and swipe at him.

He stared hard at Harry now, who blinked at him as if he didn’t know what he was talking about. Well, they were sitting at the Hufflepuff table and Harry had been talking to Longbottom, but a conversation with _Longbottom_ was—just not as important.

“What? Oh, yeah, I did. It was strange.”

“Why?”

“Because she said all these things about helping me find my place and my power.” Harry shook his head and pulled out a folded piece of parchment from his pocket. Draco had to admit that it did look like the creamy parchment Mother would use. “She misunderstood something, right? Because she must know that I don’t want to use my power. And my place is Hogwarts.”

Draco swallowed slowly. Something was wrong, but he didn’t think he had the words. He took the letter away from Harry. “I’ll, uh, read it and get back to you. Maybe she did misunderstand something.”

“Thanks, Draco! I don’t want to be rude to her. It was nice of her to write to me. I just don’t understand.” Harry stood up and grabbed a piece of bread and said to Longbottom, “It’s time for us to go stand up to Snape again.” Then he was off, Golden slithering beside him.

Longbottom gave Draco a hopeless look. Probably because he was the only one around, Draco thought, but he found he couldn’t look away, even when Kali, sitting on his shoulder, nudged at his hand impatiently.

“He doesn’t understand, does he?” Longbottom whispered. His toad leaped onto his shoulder and croaked dismally.

“No.”

Longbottom nodded and then sighed. “I hate Professor Snape, but I’m not going to let Harry get hurt.” He reached up to hold the toad onto his shoulder and hurried after Harry.

Draco looked down at the letter in his hands, and without even having read it, he knew the same thing was true of him.


	2. Part Two

Severus watched warily as Harry Potter lingered behind the rest of his House. Even Longbottom had left as soon as he could, for all that Severus tried to control his tongue in class.

_Why am I doing such a thing? Why do I let a child intimidate me so?_

Then the enormous golden snake coiled next to Potter put his head casually on one of the tables, and Severus barely restrained a shudder that made Shadowstriker squeeze tighter around his throat. Yes, _that_.

“I wanted to ask you something, Professor Snape.” Potter’s tone was earnest. It always was. Severus would have suspected the boy of having no sense of humor, except that he’d seen him laughing with Granger in the library and with Draco in the corridors between classes. “I have to know what would make a familiar get sick.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. “You believe _I_ would know, boy? Talk to Professor Kitter, she teaches Familiar Magic—”

“I don’t mean that. I think it’s a sickness that only a Parselmouth can see. Because I’ve asked, and no one else sees it, even other people who have reptile familiars like Draco. And I don’t think you can see it, or you would have done something about it already.”

Severus felt himself dropping deeper and deeper into bewilderment as he listened. “Potter, what are you going _on_ about?”

“Professor Quirrell’s familiar. She’s a bronze rabbit, I know that, but she has a silver snake floating around inside her. I tried to talk to him about it, and he told me to go away. Do you know what it could be, sir?”

Severus felt as though his ears had abruptly acquired a touch of frostbite. He resisted the urge to touch the Mark on his left arm under the sleeve. The snake on it was silver in the right light, a reminder of the Dark Lord’s familiar.

It only increased his suspicions about Quirrell.

But other than a floating Mark—which would have been risky and ridiculous to put on someone’s _familiar_ , anyway—he had no idea what Potter could be talking about. Impatience and wariness made his voice rough, made his hand rise to touch Shadowstriker. “I have no idea, Potter. Leave it to me. I will investigate it. I have access to many more books than you do.”

“But if you could just tell me the right area of the Hogwarts library to look in—”

Severus gave the boy a flat, incredulous look. “Do you _hear_ yourself, Potter?”

“Yes, sir? Did I use a word wrong?”

Severus met Potter’s impossible green eyes, and ended up turning away, the way he always did—the way he always would. He cursed himself for a coward, but still kept his face averted as he said curtly, “You cannot investigate such a thing. You are hardly an experienced researcher.” Potter stood there in unconvinced silence, and Severus bit out, annoyed that he even had to mention it, “You are a _child_.”

“With respect, sir, I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“You insolent brat—”

“No, really, sir, I mean it. People are always telling me that I have power because I have a golden familiar, and that means I should _do_ things, right? They don’t listen when I tell them that I’m no one special. And there’s the scar and what they think I did to Voldemort, too. So I need to go ahead and make things more comfortable for people if I can. Since I have this power I didn’t want.”

Severus stared at Potter in absolute silence. Potter’s eyes were glowing with conviction as absolute. No one else could turn Lily aside when she was feeling righteous, either, Severus remembered absently. As witness him, and the friendship she had tried so hard to keep alive even when he was doing his best to spit and trample on it.

The reminder made a fresh wave of agony run through him. Severus said, “If I find that you have been sneaking out of bed in an attempt to cure a sickness that is _none of your business_ , Mr. Potter, you will have detention for the rest of the year. Now get out of my sight, and—thank you for alerting me of your suspicions.” The words stuck in his throat as if he was trying to swallow a bowl of thick soup.

Potter only looked at him with a steady gaze, and then nodded. He turned, and his snake twined around his leg for a minute before he uncoiled so Potter could walk.

In the meantime, Severus stroked his viper down the back and lost himself once more in the memories of the friend he had lost, and never deserved.

*

Narcissa shook her head slowly as she looked down at the letter Draco had sent her. She supposed that even the cleverest mind must experience failure sometimes. But she could not really believe that she had failed to ensnare the Potter boy. Surely he was not so intelligent or powerful that he could resist such a trap?

But she might be imagining something now, or misinterpreting Draco’s letter the way she had misinterpreted his hints about Harry Potter. So she went from the sunny owlery where she had received the letter to the ground floor where Lucius had his study. A perfunctory knock, and she entered, ignoring the way Hecate hissed at her. That was for show. Venus growled back, and Hecate laid her head down on the other side of the desk.

“What is it, my love?”

Narcissa smiled at Lucius as she held out the letter. She had found very little reason to be proud of her family once she understood the madness that consumed them so often, the result of experimenting on their own familiars instead of trusting them to guard and express their magic. But she was glad that her parents had deemed Lucius a suitable husband. “I sent Harry Potter a letter with the intention of enticing him into an alliance with us—a mentorship with me, specifically. Somehow, he resisted. And this is the letter Draco wrote me about it. I want help in making sure that I’m not misstepping with this letter as I did with that one.”

Lucius read, while Narcissa took her place in the chair on the other side of the desk. Hecate was large enough to drape her neck over most of its back. Narcissa reached up and delicately stroked the underside of the wyvern’s neck, getting a rumbling purr and a flash of the runes she and Lucius had created in Hecate’s scales over the years.

“No,” Lucius said at last, slowly. “I don’t think it’s your fault for not thinking of something obvious. I think it’s probably Draco. He must have been wrong about how naïve Potter was. Why would he refuse a mentorship otherwise?”

“And the part where he reported that Potter said I’m being _nice_ , but he doesn’t need help finding his place?”

“I have no doubt those are the exact words Potter said. The problem is, Draco took them at face value. Do we have to?”

“No,” Narcissa said, her mind already turning in other directions, other ways of making that immense golden power serve Malfoy goals. “We do not.”

*

“Y-you will f-find that some f-familiars help you h-have a talent for D-D-Defense and some do n-not…”

Harry tried to catch Professor Quirrell’s eye, but the professor went on looking determinedly away from him. Harry sighed. He was _trying_ , but he hadn’t found any way of identifying the sickness that Alanna carried with her.

He was sure that it was only visible to Parselmouths, though. He’d asked Hermione to look for the snake in Professor Quirrell’s familiar, since Ravenclaws shared the Defense class with Hufflepuff, and she couldn’t see anything. But she was taking enthusiastically to the books in the library Harry was looking through for clues, so that was something.

Golden nudged him. Harry stroked his neck and paid more attention to the lesson. If Golden thought it was important, then it was. He’d found out how smart Golden was at the Dursleys’, when he always knew before Harry did when Dudley was trying to ambush him.

“Y-you will f-find that y-you can st-start to c-cast a d-defensive s-spell and your f-familiar w-will r-react—”

Harry listened intently, and watched as Alanna sat up on her haunches next to Professor Quirrell, like she wanted to help. But really, she was suffering so much, with her ears twitching and her coat itching whenever the silver snake shifted position, that Harry didn’t see how she could.

“Mr. Potter!”

Harry looked up. Professor Quirrell was staring at him, his eyes narrowed like Uncle Vernon’s.

“It’s t-time to find out if the B-Boy-Who-L-Lived has a f-familiar who’s g-good a-at Defense,” said Professor Quirrell, and he was smiling in a way that was _definitely_ Uncle Vernon’s. “T-take up your st-stance o-opposite me and l-lift your w-wand, but d-do n-not use i-it. Will your f-familiar to p-protect you i-instead.”

Harry just nodded. It seemed simple to him, and something he and Golden had already done a lot of, but maybe this would lead to a way to get Professor Quirrell to listen to him. He walked into the center of the classroom and lifted his wand. Golden coiled at his feet, but lifted his head high enough to rest his nose against Harry’s hip.

“Will your familiar to protect you,” said Professor Quirrell, and Harry noticed that his stutter had disappeared again. He aimed his wand. Next to him, Alanna tensed and moved her ears forwards. The silver snake was in the left one, Harry saw. “Now. _Frango_!”

The spell slammed towards him. Harry saw a bright blue blur in the air.

But he already knew what to do. The minute Golden lifted his head, the runes on his back flared into life.

Those runes had appeared for the first time when Dudley had knocked him down the stairs and Harry had almost smashed into the wall at the bottom. Golden had been right there, and his back glowed, and then there was a rune on his scales and Harry was bouncing softly as though someone had turned the wall into a cushion.

He didn’t think that would work this time. But on the other hand, he didn’t think it needed to.

One of Golden’s larger runes lit up, and a lightning bolt darted away from his back and met the blue spell. There was a huge explosion, and Harry felt the walls shake. He heard other kids cry out, and he frowned. He hadn’t meant to scare them. He reached out and stroked the back of Golden’s neck, to let him know that they didn’t need to do that again. Golden arched his head in response.

When the light cleared, Harry was staring straight at Professor Quirrell. Alanna was slumped over on her side, but just when Harry started getting really worried, she leaped back up. She was shaking, and the silver snake dangled around her neck like a dead worm.

“Cl-class d-dismissed!”

Most of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs just cheered and ran right out the door, but Hermione and Neville waited for him. And Hermione’s face was sour, and Regina was running up and down her shoulders and chattering.

“That was an illegal spell,” Hermione whispered. “Harry, that would have _killed_ you if it landed on you!”

Harry shot a look over his shoulder as he took her out in the corridor. Professor Quirrell was staring after them with his face screwed up.

_His familiar’s even sicker than I thought._


	3. Part Three

Severus kept one hand on Shadowstriker. He had ever since he walked up the stairs into Albus’s office, and not because he thought his viper would lunge and try to devour Albus’s phoenix. It wasn’t Fawkes he had to worry about hitting.

“Then you intend to do nothing?”

Albus sighed a little and popped a lemon drop into his mouth, then tried to hand one to Fawkes. The phoenix, as Severus had seen him do every time he was present when this little ritual happened, refused it with a croon. “You’ve said yourself that you can’t see this sickness in Alanna that young Harry told you about. And there’s no guarantee that it’s anything to do with Voldemort.”

Severus flinched, hated it, and went on stroking Shadowstriker. “You don’t have the assurance that it isn’t, either.”

“Neither do I have the assurance that the way the oaks grow along the edge of the Forbidden Forest doesn’t have something to do with poor Tom. Really, my dear boy, you ought to know that you can’t prove a negative.”

Severus stood up. “That’s true, Albus. Well, if you’ll excuse me, then I’ll go and do some research in the library.”

“On the word of a child?”

“On the word of a child who’s also a Parselmouth, and has a golden familiar.” Severus paused as he walked towards the door, suddenly struck by a thought. But it wasn’t one he could voice to Albus, so he ended up nodding, saying, “Good night,” and riding down the stairs while his mind rioted.

Could it be that Albus wanted to disregard Potter’s word not because he was a Parselmouth or a child—the first theories Severus had come up with—but because he was the only other person in living memory to show up with a golden familiar? Out of _jealousy_?

It wasn’t a good hypothesis, but Severus had long since discarded the thought that Albus Dumbledore was purely a good man. He went to the library in a thoughtful mood, and took out all the books on Dark Arts in the Restricted Section in a thoughtful mood, and would have gone on thinking about it if he hadn’t got discouraged by finding nothing at all about magic like the Dark Mark in the books.

The Dark Lord had always been too clever for his own good.

*

“D’you think the stories are true and he can really control snakes because he’s a Parselmouth?”

Ron braced himself. He’d been hearing the rumors swirling around Gryffindor Tower all yesterday, and he’d ignored them because no one had actually come up to him and said anything. But now someone was saying something right next to him.

It took a lot more courage to stand up to his Housemates in defense of his friends than he’d ever thought he’d need when he was Sorted into Gryffindor.

Arctos put his paw on Ron’s knee and whuffled at him encouragingly. Ron reached out, stroked his ears back, nodded, and stood up.

“At least get the stories right, McLaggen,” he said as casually as he could, while Arctos leaned against his leg and Fred and George looked up from a game they were playing with Exploding Snap cards and no rules. “They say that a Parselmouth can control _any_ reptilian familiar, not just snakes.”

McLaggen paled. At his feet, his copper lizard, Antonio, flickered out his tongue and then scrambled into McLaggen’s lap. McLaggen stroked his nose and seemed to get some confidence back. “You don’t actually know that. No one does, because there are no Parselmouths anymore.”

“There is now. Why don’t you go and ask Harry? I’m sure that he could tell you. And he’d be _happy_ to tell you. He isn’t stuck-up, like some people I could name.”

McLaggen glared at him. Ron could feel sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. McLaggen was only one year above him, but he was pretty tall and hefty. And just because Fred and George could intervene didn’t mean they _would_. They’d told Ron on his first night that they thought he could fight his own battles.

“Go talk to a _Hufflepuff?_ We don’t all have your lack of loyalty to our Houses, Weasley.”

“I’m plenty loyal to Gryffindor!”

McLaggen sneered and made his lizard scurry up to his shoulder as he leaned forwards. Arctos fixed his eyes on Antonio and growled. Antonio only flicked his tongue out again. “Then prove it. Talk to the people in Gryffindor and make friends here! Stop spending time in the library with that Ravenclaw girl and those two Hufflepuffs and that _Slytherin_.”

Ron answered before he even thought about it. “They’re my friends.”

“How can a Slytherin be anyone’s friend?”

“Because he just—is,” Ron muttered. He knew he didn’t sound convincing, and Arctos leaned harder against him as if he thought he could give Ron’s words more weight. Ron shook his head and decided to say, “Look, come along with me and meet Harry if you want, McLaggen. Then you can see the truth.”

“Which is?”

“That it doesn’t matter if he’s a Parselmouth and could control your lizard,” Ron said, folding his arms. “Because he’s not the kind of person who ever _would_. It just wouldn’t occur to him,” he added, when he saw the doubtful way McLaggen stared at him. “He doesn’t want his power. Or he only wants to use it to change things for the better.”

“People with golden familiars are always powerful and out for themselves.”

“You think Professor Dumbledore is, too?” Ron asked. It was the first time he’d ever heard someone say that kind of thing about Dumbledore. Most people respected him even if they didn’t like him much, and people like Mum and Dad almost worshiped him.

McLaggen looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t say that.”

“Is that just because Professor Dumbledore used to be a Gryffindor?” Ron snorted a little when McLaggen went red. “Come on, just meet Harry. You’ll forget he’s a Hufflepuff in a little while. He’s just Harry.”

“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”

“Unless you’re scared to,” Ron said. He knew he had it when McLaggen grabbed hold of his lizard and acted like he would surge out of the chair. “Scared that Harry’s going to control your familiar or something. I told you he wouldn’t, but you don’t believe me, do you? Or you’re too scared to believe me.”

“I’m not _scared_ , Weasley! Take that back!”

“Why should I, when you’re _acting_ scared?”

McLaggen glared at him for a little. Ron would have found the glare more impressive a fortnight ago, before he was Sorted into Gryffindor and he learned that he had his own courage, and that it didn’t matter so much that he had a bronze familiar in a family full of people with bronzes. Harry saw him for who he really was. It wasn’t the twins or Bill or Charlie that he wanted to be friends with.

“Fine,” McLaggen growled. “It looks like your little friend spends all his time with that Ravenclaw girl in the library. Tell him that I’ll meet him there tomorrow.” And he stalked off up the stairs with Antonio balanced on his shoulder and flicking his tongue at Ron and Arctos from under McLaggen’s hair.

Ron blinked, then grinned and sat back down. Most people were ignoring him again now that McLaggen was gone, but as he watched, Fabian, Fred’s bronze cockatoo familiar, flew over to the back of his chair. Ron watched him warily. Sometimes he could pet Gideon, George’s familiar, but Fabian liked to chew on Ron’s ears and crap in his hair.

Fabian just reached down and gently preened Ron’s hair, though. Then he flew back to Fred, and the twins nodded to Ron and kept playing their game.

It occurred to Ron that he should maybe have asked Harry if _he_ wanted to meet McLaggen, but he shrugged a minute later and decided it didn’t matter. Harry was just Harry, and he accepted everybody. He’d probably forgive Ron if he showed up with Voldemort in tow, let alone another Gryffindor.

*

“What are you looking up?”

Harry smiled at McLaggen and pushed the book towards him. The boy had been loud and rude for the first few minutes when he and Draco and Hermione and Ron were all together in the library, and most of his animosity seemed to be directed at Draco. But in the end, he had got interested in the ways that Hermione and Harry were discussing the sickness of Quirrell’s familiar.

“The diseases that might cause a silver snake to appear inside a bronze rabbit.”

McLaggen leaned back and scoffed a little, but then he glanced at Golden, and his tone got a lot more respectful. “Familiars don’t get sick like that. There’s no such thing.”

“Well, _something_ is making a silver snake appear inside Alanna,” Harry told him. McLaggen could scoff all he wanted, but Harry knew what he’d seen.

“And Professor Quirrell used a spell on Harry today that could have been lethal.” Hermione was practically bouncing in her seat, and Regina bobbed her head and chattered a little. She hadn’t looked away from McLaggen’s familiar since he sat down, but Harry trusted Hermione to stop her from doing something stupid. “It could have _killed_ him! But Golden’s defensive runes were good.”

“Why are your runes so good? _That_ good?” Draco said suddenly, leaning forwards.

Harry looked at him, and only saw friendly interest there. It made him hope that Draco wasn’t going to have a bad reaction or think Harry had had an especially hard life just because he had a golden familiar. So he answered. “They’re the runes from where Golden protected me against my Muggle relatives.”

McLaggen had been tilting back in his chair. Suddenly he let the legs fall forwards and nearly hit his knees on the table. “ _What_?”

“What,” Draco said, in a flatter tone, at the same time. Kali reared up on his shoulder and hissed.

Even Ron looked upset, although he hadn’t said much since they’d come into the library, just reading books and taking notes. He petted Arctos’s head and said, “I think we all want to know more about that, Harry.”

“Well, I mean, they’re Muggles,” Harry said slowly. He wondered what he should say. They seemed a lot more upset than he thought they should be, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to get them _more_ upset. “So they couldn’t see Golden, and they were always saying I was lying when I talked about him. I didn’t know anything about the wizarding world and how unusual it was to have a golden snake until Hagrid took me to Diagon Alley. Golden protected me when they pushed me down stairs or tried to grab my arm, and he kept them from holding food away from me as much as they wanted.”

McLaggen suddenly stood up and glanced at Ron. “You know what you’re talking about, Weasley. And it’s _outrageous_.” Then he stomped out of the library. Harry shook his head after him. If McLaggen wasn’t interested in helping them look for the source of Alanna’s sickness, he should have just said so in the first place.

Draco’s face was pale as he reached out and laid a hand on Harry’s sleeve. “Harry, promise me something.”

“What?” Harry patted Draco’s shoulder. He looked so upset that Harry was ready to promise him anything, except maybe to obey his mother, who just didn’t understand some of the things Harry wanted.

“You won’t go back to the Muggles. Not now.”

Harry frowned. “But where am I going to live if I don’t go back to them? They’re my only family.”

“I think McLaggen’s going to take care of that,” said Ron, smiling a little.

“ _Now_ what do you mean?” Harry said, and rolled his eyes when Ron’s smile only got bigger. “Anyway. It’s not important that we talk about the Dursleys or Golden’s runes. Hermione’s right that Professor Quirrell shot a spell at me, but I’m sure that’s connected to the way that his familiar looks. It’s like his actions aren’t really his.”

Draco sat up suddenly. “What if—what if someone else’s familiar is controlling his?”

Harry snapped his fingers. “You can do that?”

“Well—not really. I’ve never heard of it. But what you said about his actions not being his own…”

“Let me go look for books on possession,” said Hermione, and stood up so suddenly that Regina nearly fell from her shoulder, and ran off into the bookshelves. Golden stuck his head out from under the table to look after her, then returned to his nap.

“Thanks, Draco,” Harry said, and grinned at him. “We’ve got something to look for, now.”

“Lots of things,” said Draco darkly, and went back into the shelves. Harry couldn’t help noticing that he had different books from Hermione when he came back, ones on wizarding law and the treatment of children.

But for right now, he wasn’t going to say anything, only scowling and sometimes muttering to Ron, who muttered back. So Harry let it go, and discussed possession with Hermione.

The Dursleys were far away and a distant problem. Right now, they had to help Professor Quirrell.


	4. Part Four

“I need to talk to you, Potter.”

Harry blinked. He recognized Cormac McLaggen, but he couldn’t think why he would need to talk to him, and right in the middle of breakfast, too. But he leaned back at the Hufflepuff table and shrugged. “All right.”

“Not _here_.” McLaggen darted his eyes around. He got a little white when Cedric Diggory stood up and began making his way over. Cedric was only a third-year, but he was still taller than McLaggen, and he had a leopard familiar. “It’s about—it’s about something private. Your family.”

“Do you know Harry’s family?” Cedric was looming behind Harry and scowled. Nebulous, his familiar, was bronze, but he had a threatening growl, and he put his paws on the table and reared up until he was almost McLaggen’s height. “Wouldn’t have thought it of you. Don’t they all live in the Muggle world, Harry?”

“Yes.” Harry frowned a little. Cedric was acting like McLaggen had come over here to bully him, which wasn’t the case. And if it was a private matter, then they should talk about it in private, although Harry couldn’t imagine the circumstances where McLaggen would have come to know either Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon. He stood up. “It’s all right, Cedric. I’m going to go talk to him.”

“Alone?”

“Of course not. I have Golden.”

Cedric opened his mouth, and Harry honestly thought he was about to say that wasn’t enough. Then he nodded and said, still with a scowl, “Well, let me know if you need anything, Harry.” He went back to sitting down.

Harry could see his other friends watching worriedly from their House tables, but he waved at them and went away with McLaggen. Golden was slithering beside him, glowing brighter than ever as a few of the runes on his back lit up. McLaggen didn’t seem stupid to Harry, and he wouldn’t attack.

When they were out in the corridor, McLaggen pulled Harry around a corner and cast a charm that Harry didn’t recognize. He watched in interest as it lit the air around them blue. “What’s that do?”

“It tells me if there’s anyone following us or anything like that,” McLaggen said, and tucked his wand away. He was staring intently into Harry’s eyes. “You know I have lots of connections in the Ministry?”

“No.”

McLaggen looked thrown by that. “Oh. Well, I do.” He petted his lizard for a second when Antonio poked his head out from under his hair. “And my family has lots of important people in it.” He started sounding more confident again. Harry petted Golden’s head and waited. So far, this didn’t sound like it had much to do with him.

“They were all outraged when they heard about what happened to you.”

“What _happened_ to me?”

McLaggen coughed and nodded grimly to him. “You don’t have to pretend in front of me, Pot—Harry. I know how awful it must have been living with those Muggles. You said yourself that they pushed you down the stairs, and manhandled you, and tried to take food away from you.”

“They _tried_. Golden stopped them, mostly.”

“No one’s familiar has that many defensive runes on them unless it wasn’t ‘mostly,’” McLaggen said flatly. He looked upset. “Anyway, I wanted you to know that an investigation’s started. It has to be hush-hush for now, but it’ll get out in the open soon enough. They just need to collect enough evidence on the Muggles to keep you from having to go back to them.”

Harry hesitated, his hand resting on Golden’s scales, and over a rune. McLaggen was all concerned about him, but it seemed to Harry that there was someone else who needed help more. “What about Professor Quirrell?”

“What about him?” Again McLaggen looked thrown. Harry really hoped it wasn’t because he had a golden familiar and he cared about Professor Quirrell. That was just sad, the way everyone he met expected people with golden familiars to care only about themselves.

“I want them to start an investigation to help him.”

McLaggen stared. Then he shook his head. “Why would my relatives want to help _him_? He’s an adult, he can help himself. Besides, he only has a bronze rabbit.”

 _So at least part of it is because of where he stands on the hierarchy._ Harry folded his arms and glared. “Then I’ll refuse to let them help me.”

“You _can’t_. What are you going to do?”

“Wait until someone comes to talk to me, and then say I was joking and you misunderstood. Or just that you misunderstood,” Harry added, seeing the wide-eyed, horrified way McLaggen was looking at him. When he thought about that, Harry knew why. It would be horrible to joke about people hurting someone.

“You—they would take your word, because you have a golden familiar.”

“Right.” Draco had insisted that Harry read a lot of books about the history of golden familiars that were mostly depressing, but Harry remembered that part. Unless he willingly took Veritaserum or he contradicted Pensieve memories or something like that, they would _have_ to believe him when he spoke. They’d have to take his word and not doubt it, or only say they did in private. And that was really bad manners.

McLaggen just stood there with his hand on his lizard. Then he burst out, “Don’t you _want_ to be helped? Uncle Tiberius said—”

“I want all people to be helped.” Harry stood up more strongly and looked McLaggen right in the eye. “For whatever reason, none of the adults here are helping Professor Quirrell. Maybe because they can’t see the snake or they hate him, I don’t know. But _I_ know. I want to create a world where people with all colors of familiar are respected, McLaggen. I can’t take special privileges for myself if I want to do that.”

“But.” McLaggen sat down on the floor suddenly. “That means you might go back to those filthy Muggles and suffer some more!”

“But you only care so much because I have Golden. Don’t you?”

“Well.” McLaggen looked at Golden, then at him. “Yes.”

“So that’s not the best reason for caring,” Harry said, and sighed a little when McLaggen only shook his head as if he didn’t understand. “I want to help Professor Quirrell. You said that your relatives in the Ministry are powerful. They should be able to get an investigation started, shouldn’t they? They wouldn’t want a dangerous or sick professor around their children.” _Or a possessed one._ But Harry didn’t know if he was yet, which meant he would keep his mouth shut until he knew.

“They’re going to be upset when I come to them twice in a row.”

“Say whatever you want. I trust you to know what you should say better than me.”

McLaggen looked a little cheered-up at that, but not happy. He stood up and studied Harry with his head on one side. “I have no idea why you’re so different from the way I was told people with a golden familiar would be.”

“Growing up in the Muggle world. The hierarchy doesn’t matter to me.”

“What does?”

“People.”

McLaggen looked baffled, but he nodded and walked off, only raising a hand once when it seemed as though Antonio would overbalance and topple off his shoulder. Harry went back into the Great Hall and just had time to eat a little more at the Hufflepuff table before it vanished and they had to go to classes.

“I’m fine, Cedric,” he told Cedric patiently when he tried to examine him.

Cedric only nodded and turned to talk to a few of the older Hufflepuffs. Harry shook his head and left with Neville in tow.

They caught up with Hermione outside the Great Hall, since they had Potions with the Ravenclaws this morning. “Harry!” Hermione was practically bouncing next to him. “What did McLaggen want?”

“He wanted to rescue me.” Hermione looked puzzled, and Harry just shook his head and said, “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

Hermione nodded slowly, and then looked over her shoulder. “I thought the fourth-year Hufflepuffs had different classes right now.”

Harry looked himself. The two boys were some of the ones Cedric had been talking about. He shrugged. “They can do whatever they want. Come on.” He started walking briskly, but of course Golden flowed faster than he did. That always ended up happening. Harry smiled fondly at Golden, and received a blunt head pushing into his hip.

Hermione kept looking at the boys, who followed them down to the dungeons, up to Snape’s classroom door, and then turned around once they entered. Harry shrugged again when she tried to say something about it. Honestly, he thought Cedric might have chosen the boys to guard him or something.

But it was a silly thing to suspect. His friends and people like McLaggen had good reason to worry about Harry. Older students in Hufflepuff didn’t, and Harry said hello and good-bye to Cedric and that was about it. Most likely, the boys had followed them down to watch Golden. People did that all the time, to see what a golden familiar looked like and how he moved.

 _If people could just see that I was ordinary, it would be so much better for them and for me,_ Harry thought wistfully as he took his seat and prepared to set up his cauldron.

*

Hermione pushed her hair out of her mouth and waved to Terry Boot, who she’d been studying for their Transfiguration exam with. “I’ll be back in a minute, Terry. I see someone I want to talk to.”

“All right,” Terry muttered, with a shrug that made his bronze butterfly familiar have to fly up and then resettle on his hand. Hermione smiled. The other Ravenclaws had already come to terms with her tendency to have friends in other Houses, even though most of them were pretty standoffish and only made friends in Ravenclaw. It helped a lot that Hermione had a silver familiar, she thought.

“Which is silly,” she told Regina, who chattered in agreement. “Just because they think that familiars show magical strength…I would be impressive even if you were tin! And Harry is just a natural leader anyway.”

Regina nipped her, probably for the tin comment. Hermione turned a sharp corner around a bookshelf and surprised McLaggen just as he was taking down a book on defensive Charms.

“What do you want, Granger?” he asked gruffly.

“I know that you said something important to Harry the other day,” she said. “And then I saw you walking away from him, looking dumbfounded.” That wasn’t unusual around Harry, but Hermione liked to know _why_. “What happened?”

McLaggen’s eyes started to gleam as he looked at her. Most of the time, Hermione would be wary. It usually meant that the student whose eyes were gleaming wanted her help with homework. But in this case, it was probably something else. So she set her feet and looked back at him undaunted.

“You’re smart,” McLaggen said. “And you have a silver familiar, and you’re a Ravenclaw, not someone in Harry’s own House they might think was being influenced by him. Not in my House either, come to think of it. Maybe you could convince my relatives.”

“Of what?”

“Come on, Granger, and I’ll tell you.”

Hermione followed McLaggen, a little worried that she might be betraying Harry, but not really. If it was anything terrible, then she would just walk away and not engage with him.

She was smart, and Regina would eat his lizard if he tried anything.


	5. Part Five

Severus grimaced as he laid down the book in front of him and shook his head. Of course the “secret” of what was happening to Quirrell would turn out to be something as simple as possession. Severus ought to have seen that possibility long before he overheard the children in the library.

But while he was almost certain that Quirrell was possessed by the Dark Lord, as yet he had no direct proof. The word of a Parselmouth was not enough for open court. More than that, it was not enough for _Dumbledore._

Then Severus paused, and Shadowstriker wriggled around his neck in agitation, as though scolding him for being so stupid.

The word of a Parselmouth, no. But the word of someone with a golden familiar?

And _two_ people with golden familiars?

Severus stood with a swirl of his cloak and left his quarters. In truth, he thought, he had merely being putting off this confrontation because he did not wish to speak with Albus lately. If he hadn’t been hiding behind his own version of denial, he would have anticipated the simplest solution some time ago.

Then again, he wasn’t used to dealing with the fact that two people who had golden familiars existed in the wizarding world. He didn’t think anyone was, yet.

He had to growl several Muggle sweets at the gargoyle before it gave in and let him enter, but that didn’t dent his mood as much as it would have on most afternoons. He had the solution to the Quirrell problem, and it didn’t involve the waiting and watching from the shadows that was necessary to preserve his cover in case the Dark Lord returned soon. He would just let his employer take care of it.

Albus was smiling when Severus stepped into the office, and Fawkes was perched on his shoulder, grooming his hair. “Lemon drop?”

Severus accepted it, because it would put Albus in a better mood, but Shadowstriker stole it on its way to his mouth. That was by prior arrangement, of course. Severus leaned forwards and said, “I have discovered what plagues Quirinus.”

“Have you?”

Albus’s voice had chilled, his eyes darkened. Severus noticed the signs and paused, but his own drive to get this situation solved and out of his lap was too strong to be set back by those signs. “Yes. He is possessed. I have never heard of a case like it, but it is not beyond the point of believability that the possessing spirit’s familiar could manifest in the familiar of the victim. I found a book that argues for the convincing theoretical possibility, in fact.”

“And you think the possessing spirit is…?”

“The Dark Lord.”

Albus sighed and shook his head. “Severus. We cannot go around basing conclusions on so little evidence. Yes, it is _possible_ that poor Quirinus is possessed. But no one has actually seen this supposed familiar-inside-a-familiar, have they?”

“Harry Potter.”

“No one else can see—”

“No. But there is also no reason to doubt the word of someone who stands on the golden rung of the hierarchy.”

Albus paused again. In the silence, Fawkes flew from his shoulder back to the perch he usually occupied and sat there, looking alertly back and forth between the two men.

Severus didn’t let himself react. He kept his eyes on Albus’s, sure that his thoughts were secure behind his Occlumency walls, and that Albus was merely trying the time-honored tactic of a disappointed stare on him, instead of actually reading his mind.

“Severus,” Albus whispered. “My boy. I know how hard this has all been for you—”

“How hard all _what_ has been for me?”

Severus’s voice was louder than it should have been in his surprise, but he had no idea what Albus was referring to, and that prevented him from playing along with the game to see what would happen, the way he otherwise would. He watched as Albus tragically shook his head and sighed a little.

“Seeing Harry Potter come to Hogwarts with a golden familiar. His resemblance to his father is striking, but of course James only had a silver. For you to see the reincarnation of your worst enemy, with all his father’s characteristics, walking around the school and basking in adulation and power…”

“If he was truly a reincarnation of his father, then he would have been Sorted into Gryffindor. And my worst enemy is the Dark Lord.”

“Still, to see young Harry with this power. What must it do to your heart?”

“Not the power itself.” Severus saw no need to mention that he had once been afraid Potter would use his Parseltongue to control Shadowstriker, the way that the Dark Lord had done. He could see now that that wasn’t in Potter’s character. “He doesn’t care about the adulation. He wants to save people. In fact, he was the one who first told me that he saw the Dark Lord’s snake inside Quirinus’s familiar, because he wants to _help_ the bastard.”

“We have no idea if it _is_ Tom’s snake, Severus.”

“That is a lot more like Lily than it ever was James.”

“You are still asking me to act on suspicions.”

“Spoken by someone with a golden familiar.” Severus spent a moment stroking his finger down Shadowstriker’s back. He hadn’t truly thought Albus would be so reluctant to do something. Of course, he had considered the possibility, but it meant that something else was true, something that would make his life harder.

“And still a child.” Albus shook his head again, and Fawkes trilled something. Severus had never been able to understand the bloody bird, though. “I’m afraid that I must ask you to wait, Severus. Wait, and consider whether we can afford to go chasing every rumor brought to our attention by children.”

Severus clamped down his self-control, and Shadowstriker did not do more than utter a single sharp hiss. Severus stood up and inclined his head. “As you say, Headmaster. Then I will go away, and hope that things work out better than they seem inclined to right now.”

Albus’s eyes began twinkling again. “You may rest assured that I will not let Quirinus hurt any of the children, Severus.”

 _Oh, you would, if you thought it would serve the greater good,_ Severus thought bitterly as he turned and went down the stairs. And he was not sure that confirmation of what he had suspected made up for his failure to move Albus.

Still, there was that confirmation.

Albus _was_ jealous of Potter’s power. Severus would have staked what little was left of his blackened and tattered soul on it.

*

Harry looked calmly at Hermione and McLaggen as they stood together in front of him. “No.”

“B-but, _Harry_! It’s the right thing to do!” Hermione looked like she wanted to shake him. Regina had her back arched and her teeth chattering together. Golden stuck his head out from beneath the table in response, but Harry knew that he wouldn’t actually eat anybody. He just wanted to see if Harry needed his protection.

“Listen to Granger, mate. She’s your friend.” McLaggen folded his arms and nodded as though that meant his transparent tactics to manipulate Harry had to be effective. His familiar was hidden, the way he always seemed to be around Golden.

“No,” Harry repeated. Hermione had quoted wizarding law at him, including laws about how any wizard was entitled to do anything they thought necessary to protect a wounded or desperate person with a golden familiar. McLaggen seemed to think that having Hermione quote the law would persuade Harry the way McLaggen going to his family hadn’t.

“No, I’m not your friend?”

“Of course you’re my friend, Hermione. I just meant that I’m not going to listen,” Harry said firmly. “Not unless someone does something to help Quirrell at the same time they help me.”

Hermione looked a little cheered-up, but she still exchanged hopeless glances with McLaggen. McLaggen sighed and scratched his armpit. “You’re going to embarrass my family if they have to end the investigation into the Muggles.”

“I don’t want them to do that. Just investigate Quirrell at the same time. I’m almost sure he’s possessed. See what they can do with cases of possession. I read about the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry. They could have something there that would help him, right?”

McLaggen blinked. Then he said, “That’s a good idea, Potter. I’ll go and ask them about it.” And he almost ran down the aisles between the library shelves.

Hermione sat down across from him. “You’re not angry with me?”

“No. Just a little puzzled. Why did you think that would work?”

“McLaggen made it sound convincing.”

Harry laughed. “One thing you should always remember, Hermione, is that I always want to help people.”

Hermione nodded, but she kept giving him little darting glances from under her eyelids for the rest of the afternoon. Harry ignored it. She was probably embarrassed and needed some time to recover.

But when they were walking out of the library together, Professor Snape stopped them and said, “I need to talk to you, Potter,” and Harry felt his heart lift. Professor Snape looked determined and upset, and that meant—

_Maybe he finally believed me about Professor Quirrell?_

_Maybe someone is finally going to help him!_

“Of course, Professor,” Harry said politely, and followed Snape, with a wave of his hand to Hermione. He didn’t know why she looked so nervous. He would be fine as long as Golden was with him, and Professor Snape was inclined to listen to reason. It was a _great_ day.


	6. Part Six

"Bar the door.”

Harry frowned a little at Professor Snape's back. It seemed to him that the _Professor_ should bar the door. Harry had read about a few Locking Charms, but he wasn't any good at them yet, when he'd been researching possession and law and people with golden familiars and a few other things.

Then he thought of one way he could manage it. He nodded at Golden, who slid softly towards the door and lay down along the crack underneath it. Now no one would be able to look underneath it or probably hear them, and Golden could push back with enormous strength if someone tried to open it.

"There," Harry told Professor Snape.

The professor turned around, wand already in one hand. Then he paused and his eyebrows flickered. "You found a way."

"I do most of the time, sir." Harry looked around and saw the student chair in front of the desk. He went to sit down in it. "Did you want to talk with me about Professor Quirrell, sir?"

"In part." Snape put his wand away with a strange expression on his face. Then he sat down in his own chair. "I have decided that you were right and that sickness with his familiar _is_ something worth worrying about. Possession, in fact." He shifted his hand around the way mice shifted when Golden stalked them. "I brought that fact to the attention of the Headmaster."

Harry leaned forwards. "What did he say, sir?"

"That he does not intend to move at the moment."

Harry scowled. "Is that because he thinks like my friends? That it's somehow an inconvenience to help other people than me?"

"No--no, I don't think that is it." Professor Snape hesitated, and Harry found himself wishing the man would simply spit it out. But he had no idea what was coming next, so he had to wait. Professor Snape petted his familiar and looked all around the room before he nodded.

"I believe," said Professor Snape at last, "that the Headmaster would rather disregard what you say about Professor Quirrell because you do not fit in with his plans for you."

Harry blinked some more. The one thing he knew for certain was that _no one_ had had plans for him, because no one thought he was going to show up with a golden familiar. "What do you mean, sir?"

“I am not entirely certain.” At least Professor Snape looked as frustrated with that fact as Harry felt. “I do know that he seems to think that you will take certain actions he can predict, and Professor Quirrell, the same.” The professor stroked his familiar again. “If I had to venture a guess, then I think he means to set up Quirrell an obstacle for you to overcome.”

“But he’s _sick_! Or possessed. That means we have to help him.”

“You would be amazed at the amount of people Albus Dumbledore manages to get out of helping, even when it seems as if that is one of the main reasons his office exists.”

There was a lot of bitterness in Professor Snape’s remark. Harry hesitated and looked back at Golden, but Golden just looked at him. So Harry had to face Professor Snape and ask the question by himself. “Were you one of them, sir?”

Professor Snape stiffened. “We are not here to discuss me, Mr. Potter. We are here to discuss what we are going to _do_.”

“We’ll have to work against the Headmaster, then.” Harry felt a little despondent about that. He would have liked to connect with the only other person who had a golden familiar, and ask him questions like how he kept people from fawning over him. “Hermione has been looking up ways to expel a possessing spirit. Do you think we could do that?”

There was a long moment when Professor Snape seemed about to choke on his own spit. Dudley did that sometimes, but Harry didn’t know why _Professor Snape_ seemed so surprised.

“Expelling a possessing spirit is Dark magic.”

“But is there any other way to help Professor Quirrell?”

“We could report him to the Ministry. They have the right to use that particular—anti-possession magic without being arrested for it.”

Harry wanted to roll his eyes. But he knew Professor Snape was trying to be helpful, so he didn’t do it. “Do you think they would? Or would they imprison him for the crimes of the spirit possessing him?”

For a second, he thought the silver snake on Professor Snape’s shoulder was actually going to slither down and attack him, and he braced himself for that. But instead, Professor Snape held the snake back with a motion of his hand, and said only, “You _have_ been studying.”

“Yes. I know they do that to other possessed people, sometimes. They only seem to help the famous ones or the ones that have a lot of money. And I don’t think Professor Quirrell fits into those categories.”

“No. He does not.” For some reason, Professor Snape was studying him very closely now. “You don’t mind using Dark magic?” His eyes went to the scar on Harry’s forehead, and he frowned.

“Well, Dark magic seemed pretty broad to me,” Harry said honestly. “Yes, there’s one kind of it that killed my parents and Voldemort used on me, too. But that was a curse. Should I never cast any curse because of that?”

“No.” Professor Snape’s voice was low. “It just isn’t what I expected to hear from you.”

Harry shook his head, a little exasperated. Professor Dumbledore seemed to have given up helping Professor Quirrell because Harry wasn’t what he expected him to be, but Harry didn’t think that meant it should happen to anyone else. “How could anyone have all these _expectations_ of me, sir? Fine, they didn’t know that I would have a golden familiar, but I’ve been in the wizarding world for _weeks_ now. That means they should have time to get used to me! Will you help us get rid of that possessing spirit or not?”

*

_He thinks people can get used to him within a fortnight?_

Severus wished he could have time alone with a vat of Firewhisky. It would have to be a vat. But he couldn’t, which meant he needed to keep on going and try to address Potter’s own expectations.

“They thought you would be a Gryffindor,” he said. “Because your parents were. They thought you would understand and be conscious of your own importance. Because they thought you would be raised by a wizarding family. They thought you would be a prodigy with magic, compassionate, kind to them all, wonderfully accepting. And some of that might be true, but most of it comes from their belief in you as a hero.”

Potter calmed down with remarkable quickness, although he glanced at his Golden several times. Then he nodded and said, “I understand, sir. When can we set up the ritual to expel the possessing spirit from Professor Quirrell?”

Severus wanted to close his eyes. He resisted the temptation. “It isn’t that simple.”

“Why not, sir?”

“We can’t conduct the ritual without some ingredients that will take time to purchase or find. And we can’t do it without some feeling for how strong the possessing spirit is. The ritual varies in strength depending on that.”

“Oh,” said Potter, and pondered a little more. “What if we assume the spirit is as strong as possible? Is it going to be a problem if we have the ritual be too strong instead of just the right strength?”

“Perhaps not. But you should tell me why we should assume this is a powerful spirit.”

“Well, the history I’ve read says that Voldemort had a silver snake as a familiar, sir. And there’s a silver snake floating around in Professor Quirrell’s rabbit. I think that means it’s Voldemort’s spirit. Which would be as strong as possible, right?”

Severus had to swallow several times to clear the dryness out of his mouth. “Where—you are not afraid?”

“I don’t want things to go wrong,” said Potter, staring at him with earnest eyes. “So I’m afraid they might. But we _can’t_ leave him there and suffering from being possessed by Voldemort, sir. I think the Headmaster probably does have a plan for that. But his plan involves waiting. I don’t want to wait.”

 _He is a rule-breaker,_ Severus realized with surprise. _I never saw it before._

And neither would most of the other people observing Potter, he knew. They would see a polite boy—a Hufflepuff—who seemed to be concerned about everyone in sight, and they would assume that he was either weak and mild, or too frightened to stir a foot out of line. They would blame his Gryffindor and Slytherin friends if he was caught in a prank or otherwise out of bounds.

And from the way Potter stared him directly in the eye, he had all sorts of excuses ready. He had certainly hidden his readiness to use the Dark Arts well until Severus had asked a question that drew that trait out.

“We must wait,” Severus said, and made his voice sharp, “until we can gather the ingredients.”

“I know, sir. But after that?”

“We must wait until we know more about the possessing spirit.”

“I think I could send Golden to spy on Professor Quirrell. Or maybe Hermione could do it. Regina is small enough that Professor Quirrell might not see her. If he talks to himself about Voldemort when he’s alone, then we would have proof, right?”

Severus wanted to put a hand over his eyes. He wanted to laugh. But neither would actually suffice to discourage Potter, so he said only, “We need to think about this and approach it slowly. Otherwise, we might alert Professor Quirrell. He might simply flee, and then we wouldn’t be able to—free him at all.”

Potter paused, then nodded. “All right, sir. But what do you think we ought to do in the meantime?”

“I will need some money for the more expensive ingredients,” Severus murmured. He grimaced. He knew how to get that money, but it involved venturing into the Forbidden Forest and harvesting plants that were both unpleasant and dangerous to deal with. “And to gather some of the rest. The gathering is the part that will take the least time. Buying the ingredients, on the other hand, earning the money and—”

“I have a lot of money in my vault, sir.”

“I am _not_ going to take any money from you, Potter. No, _listen_ to me. Your parents left that money so you could pay for school. I know that in some respects it is yours to do with as you wish, but think about how you would feel if you couldn’t attend school at Hogwarts for one year, or even more, because you ran out of Galleons.”

“Okay, sir, I can see what you mean. But is there anything we can do in the meantime while you’re earning the money?”

“Keep an eye on Quirrell for me. Alert me at once if his behavior changes.”

Potter nodded slowly. “It just seems like we should be doing more.”

Severus sneered at him a little. Interacting with the boy like this let him forget easily enough how powerful Potter was, and even that he was a Parselmouth who might be able to take the allegiance of Severus’s familiar away from him. He was as impatient and eager as any student, and as disregarding of the danger as any Gryffindor. He just hid it better than many of the dunderheads Severus dealt with on a daily basis. “We are _not_ doing more than this, Potter. If I find out that you have used your snake or Granger’s familiar to spy on Quirrell, or otherwise done something risky and failed to keep yourself safe, I will put you in detention for the rest of the year.”

Potter hesitated. Severus could almost follow his thought process. _It might be worth it._

“I can easily expose your plans to the Headmaster. Or use the detentions to make sure that you cannot participate in atta—helping Quirrell at all.”

“All right, sir.” Potter surrendered with a little breath. “And thank you for helping us. You didn’t have to do it, and I know that you don’t like Professor Quirrell much, but this really is the right thing to do. Especially if I’m supposed to be fighting Voldemort.”

“For now,” Severus said, holding back the headache, “concentrate on your homework and acting like a normal schoolboy. If you do something different now, you will attract his attention.”

“You’re right, sir. Thank you again. I know this is going to take a lot of work. Please let me know if I can help.”

Potter nodded respectfully to him, collected his snake, and slipped out of the office. Severus watched him go, his frown growing more pronounced as he sat there.

It was not right that Severus himself should have to take so many risky actions to free Quirrell from what probably _was_ the possession of the Dark Lord. But it also wasn’t right that a boy like Potter should have to come up with such plans, or notice the problem in the first place, or plot to solve it.

The first seeds of a still deeper doubt than he had felt so far grew in Severus’s mind.

 _The Headmaster must be wrong about Potter being the one who has to defeat the Dark Lord alone. H_ _e_ must _be. I do not care if he has the power. It is…not right to place the burden on a child alone._


	7. Part Seven

“All right. I spoke to my relatives who work in the Ministry. They said they would be able to do something for Quirrell if you could figure out what was wrong with him _for sure._ Their investigation hasn’t turned up anything.”

Harry smiled and curled his arm around Golden’s neck. They were meeting in an alcove on the third floor that McLaggen had said was private, and both Golden and Antonio were keeping watch. “I can do that. What do I need to do for your relatives?”

“An interview. They need an interview where you tell the truth about what happened with your _Muggles_.”

“I don’t think I can leave the school, though. Is someone going to come here and interview me?”

McLaggen nodded, a piece of his hair falling into his eyes. “But we’ll have to either keep it quiet and without the Headmaster’s knowledge, or you need to invite them. Which would you rather do?”

Harry hesitated. There was one thing he actually hadn’t tried, and until he had, he supposed he didn’t have the right to sneak around Headmaster Dumbledore. “Let me invite them. Who’s going to interview me? Someone from the _Prophet_?”

McLaggen was relaxed and grinning now. It seemed he really wanted to help Harry that much. Harry smiled again. “Not that kind of interview, Harry. With my cousin Julian who works for Children’s Services. He’ll bring a list of questions they use in these kinds of interviews, but he might ask other ones, too. Would that be okay?”

“Is it special treatment?”

“It has to be. Most of the time, they would only do this kind of interview with an adult present. They respect that your guardians are abusive and most of the professors in the school wouldn’t go against Dumbledore. So they’ll do it alone. And they’re agreeing to do it in the first place—”

“Because I have a golden familiar.”

“Yes.”

McLaggen said it without a trace of shame. Harry sighed, but he remembered how much hard work it was going to take to change things. He could go slowly, or he could try and go fast, but he didn’t think anyone would listen to him if he did that. And he could try to use only Light magic, or he could use Dark magic, too, like the ritual that would free Quirrell from Voldemort’s spirit. He had to do what _worked_.

He had to let people do special things right now because he had a golden familiar. But soon things would change, and then he would be more equal and people would calm down. He just had to get there first.

He nodded to McLaggen and said, “First I’m going to talk to Dumbledore and figure out if he knows about Quirrell being possessed. It just seems like he _has_ to.” He thought about mentioning that Professor Snape thought Dumbledore did, but then he decided not to. McLaggen was like most Gryffindors. He hated Professor Snape. “But if he doesn’t say anything, then we’ll go ahead and do what we have to do.”

“Are you sure the Hat didn’t want to put you in Gryffindor, Potter? You’ve got the rule-breaking aspect down pat.”

“Hufflepuffs break rules, too. We just don’t get caught.”

McLaggen snorted, shook his hand, and went away, saying he was going to send an owl to his cousin about a time when he could come to Hogwarts and interview Harry. Harry took Golden’s head between his hands and looked him solemnly in the eye.

“Can you go and find Fawkes? Just tell him that I’d like to speak Headmaster Dumbledore. I don’t know the password for his office.”

Golden flicked his tongue out to touch Harry’s hand briefly, and then turned and slid up the corridor. Harry watched him go. He hoped things would work out. Headmaster Dumbledore just seemed like a really strange person if he _knew_ about Professor Quirrell being possessed but wouldn’t try to help him.

*

“Wow, this is brilliant.”

“I’m glad it meets with your approval, dear boy.” Albus settled back behind his desk and watched Harry stare around in awe. And unabashed fascination. He smiled. It had been a long time since he’d been eleven, but Harry’s bright eyes reminded him in the best possible way. “Now. Did you want to tell me why you sent Golden to seek out Fawkes?”

“Oh! Yeah.” The boy jogged over and sat in the chair in front of the desk. His snake followed him, sliding along the floor. Albus watched him. Golden seemed fat and lazy and more prone to curling around Harry’s feet and falling asleep than helping him wield powerful magic, but Fawkes had seemed like a harmless downy hatchling when Albus first entered Hogwarts, too.

Albus was not sure what he regretted more: that Golden was, well, golden, or that he was a snake. One of them might have been livable, despite the shock of seeing the boy show up with such a familiar. Both of them together were not.

“Are you going to help Professor Quirrell, sir?”

Albus blinked and looked up to find the boy studying him with those startling green eyes. They hadn’t been equally startling in Lily Evans’s face, he remembered. Then again, the silver dolphin swimming through the air beside her, while remarkable, hadn’t been a challenge to everything he believed in.

“In time, my dear boy, in time.”

“But he’s suffering right _now_! And his familiar must be suffering all the time, with that horrible snake inside her! I mean, I like snakes. I’m glad I have Golden. And Professor Snape’s is really handsome. But Professor Quirrell is supposed to have a rabbit. Not a snake.”

“I assure you that I am working on it, Harry.”

Albus put a little sternness in his tone, but the boy didn’t seem impressed by it. That made Albus grieve. He knew Harry, growing up in the Muggle world as he had done, couldn’t have really understood what it meant to stand at the top of the wizarding hierarchy when Hagrid had first taken him shopping in Diagon Alley. Was this a sign that he had indeed adapted, too fast, and would disdain the people around him as being beneath him?

“But he needs help.”

“Any solution would take time, even something drastic. I think you probably know that, Harry, with the amount of research I suspect you have had your friends do on possession.”

“I know. But—it would really help, sir, to know that you’re moving forwards and you’re going to do something about it. Are you? Could you just tell me what it is and when you’re going to do it?”

Albus’s heart did melt at seeing the compassion in that small face. No, he was sure the boy hadn’t lost the lessons of pity and humility he would have learned in the Muggle world. He simply wasn’t the best at expressing himself, but then, what eleven-year-old was? Albus must remember not to judge him too harshly.

“I’m afraid that I can’t tell you what it is, Harry, because if Professor Quirrell is possessed by the spirit I think he is possessed by, then he would read the truth out of your mind. But I can tell you that it will be solved by the end of term.”

Harry blinked. “Oh. By the Christmas hols, sir?”

“Oh, possibly. By the end of the year, at least, in June.”

Harry sat up as though someone had jerked him up like a puppet. “Please, sir, that’s not enough. Please move faster.”

“But these things cannot be rushed at all.” Albus linked his fingers together, and nodded at Fawkes, sitting on his perch a few feet away. Fawkes obediently sang a trill of notes. “It’s like Fawkes maturing from a chick to an adult and then rebirthing himself in fire. Rushing it would mean that he wouldn’t be a mature phoenix, only a firebird.”

He’d hoped to make Harry smile, but Harry was too intent. “Could you speed it up so it _is_ by the Christmas holidays? Sir.”

“No, Harry, I do not think I can.” Albus had hoped at one point that things would be solved faster than they looked to be moving, but now, he assumed that he would need until the end of the year for Quirinus to either find a way past the traps and find himself confounded, or ask for help. He couldn’t perform any ritual or spell that would affect the possession without free consent from the victim. The other ways were all intolerably Dark magic.

“Okay.” Harry hung his head. Albus stood up and came around the desk to hug his shoulders with one arm. He remembered being downcast like that himself, especially after he realized that nothing he did would bring Ariana back or fix his own mistakes.

He could only do better going forwards in the future. And one of the things he had learned was how not to make the same mistakes. He wouldn’t move too fast. He wouldn’t fire spells impulsively. He wouldn’t just assume that someone would do what he wanted, the way he had assumed Aberforth would stay home from Hogwarts and take care of Ariana. He would ask, and consider things from many angles, and wait for permission.

“I assure you that things are under control, Harry, probably better than you think. And you are a child, in any case. A child should not have to concern himself with adult problems.”

“Even if I have a golden familiar, sir?”

Albus blinked and shook his head. “No. Has someone been telling you that you should?” Severus was the most likely candidate. He did seem to be much more bothered about Harry having a golden familiar than he should be.

“Just—people expect a lot of me. And I want to help them.”

“Professor Quirrell is going to be helped, Harry. I promise. When he asks for help, then I can conduct the proper spell to banish the spirit that possesses him.”

“So there’s a spell you can only do with permission, sir?”

“Just so, Harry. You have to have the consent of the victim, if it is to remain Light magic.”

Harry was looking a little calmer now, and he nodded, as if satisfied that Albus’s explanation made sense. Then he leaped off the chair and asked, “Can I go now, sir? I’ve got some homework that I have to do.”

Albus chuckled indulgently. The boy seemed to be taking less on his shoulders when he knew adults would handle it. He could relax back into being a child now—as he still was, no matter the implications of the golden snake at his heels. “Of course, my boy. But remember to eat dinner and take some time for yourself! I think you deserve a relaxing evening.”

Harry smiled at him and then turned and left. Albus reached out to stroke Fawkes. His phoenix leaned into his touch with a worried little croon.

“Yes, his sense of responsibility is rather overdeveloped,” Albus told Fawkes. “But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as long as he can relax and play sometimes. And it’s probably part of what got him into Hufflepuff. He’ll start making some friends in his own House soon. They can teach him how to relax.”

*

“He’s not going to help Professor Quirrell, Golden.”

Golden reared up against Harry’s legs. They were in the Hufflepuff common room, but it was late, and almost everyone was in bed by now, if they weren’t out serving detention. Cedric kept coming down the stairs to give him chiding looks, but Harry had said he would be up by curfew. Cedric was probably asleep by now. He hadn’t come down the stairs in the past half-hour.

Golden studied him seriously, and then he nodded.

“And he wants to stick with Light magic.”

Another nod.

“So we can’t rely on him. But Professor Snape can’t do this all alone and with just us. We need another adult. What do you think about…”

Harry tapped his fingers on the chair for a minute before Golden got his head underneath them and hovered there, extremely satisfied to have Harry petting _him_ instead. Harry smiled gently at him and stroked his scales with little motions.

“All right. We’ll ask Draco about speaking to his mum tomorrow.”


	8. Part Eight

“You look less delighted than I would have thought, my dear.”

“Of course I’m glad that young Mr. Potter is writing to me.” Narcissa sipped from the cup of tea she’d had the house-elves prepare in an experimental way, and then sighed. It didn’t hide the taste of the cosmetic potion. “I’m only puzzled about the reason. That he wants to help Quirinus Quirrell…”

“ _Help_.” Lucius lounged against Hecate’s side, his hand trailing over the thick scales on her neck. “And what does he think is wrong with poor Professor Quirrell?”

“Possession.”

“By…?”

“A powerful spirit is all the letter says.” Narcissa put the parchment aside and looked at her husband over the dining table. Venus leaned against her side, the way that Lucius was leaning against Hecate, but Narcissa only stroked her head absently. She did not feel the need of _comfort_ right now, exactly. “And I do wonder what kind of spirit could be powerful enough both to possess someone capable of teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts and to escape the Headmaster’s eye in the school.”

Lucius’s breathing quickened a moment later. “A spirit perhaps powerful enough to punish those who fight against it?”

Narcissa let her eyes flicker to her husband’s left arm, and then she nodded. “Precisely.” She stood. “Well, Mr. Potter has invited me to a private meeting, with all the assurance of someone who has the right to do that. Perhaps he is interested in picking up his political mantle after all. Perhaps this letter asking for help for Quirrell is only a ruse.”

“Rather a clever one for him to have come up with on his own.”

“Yes. Although Draco may be helping him.”

“And not telling us about it?”

Narcissa inclined her head in recognition of that likely impossibility, and then turned and walked towards the fireplace. She would Floo into one of the Hogsmeade shops that had a public hearth and make her way to the school from there.

Venus gave a low, rattling growl next to her. Narcissa stroked her neck for a moment until the snow leopard was calm.

“I know that you will defend me on the unlikely chance that this turns out to be a trap,” she told her familiar.

Venus flashed her rune-carved fangs, and followed Narcissa into the flames the moment she cast the Floo powder.

*

“I want to be there,” Draco had said.

Harry had looked at him hard. “Why?”

“Because you have no idea what my mother can do.”

“Can you defend me from anything she might do in a way that Golden can’t?”

That had made Draco wilt a little. “No,” he muttered, and he sounded resentful.

Harry had nodded, and touched his friend’s shoulder. “It’s okay. If you want to do something while I’m meeting with your mother, could you try and get some more Slytherins on our side? I know not that many of them want to connect with me since I fought Voldemort, and some are still scared because they think I’m going to control their snake or lizard familiars. You’ll talk to them for me, won’t you?”

Draco had immediately brightened and promised that he would. Harry was waiting near the edge of the grounds with Golden. He’d been to visit Hagrid, and he had a reason to be out there. And he trusted Narcissa Malfoy to come up with an excuse as to why she was visiting Hogwarts if she had to.

But she came walking towards him with no trouble, appearing so suddenly that Harry thought she must be under a charm to make it hard to see her. She was a tall woman with long pale hair and a silver snow leopard at her side. Harry nodded. She was the kind of woman Aunt Petunia would have liked to be, regal and knowing.

“Mr. Potter.” Mrs. Malfoy made a little nod to him that went almost down to the height of her shoulder, and she bent over with her hands on her knees, too. Why was she…Oh. Bowing. Harry wanted to sigh, but he had to use this right now. “I am Narcissa Malfoy. This is my familiar, Venus.”

“She’s beautiful,” Harry said, with a smile, and the snow leopard gave him what seemed like a confused glance. _Probably people with golden familiars aren’t supposed to praise silver ones or something._ Harry held his eyes still and nodded to Mrs. Malfoy. “Can I talk to you about Professor Quirrell?”

“Of course, Mr. Potter.” Mrs. Malfoy drew her wand, and Golden moved in front of Harry, but all she did was cast a shimmering line in the air. “Now we can be neither seen nor heard,” she explained, and sat on a rock facing the lake. “What do you know about the spirit that has possessed poor Quirinus?”

“It’s Voldemort, so we need to use a powerful ritual to get rid of it.”

Mrs. Malfoy turned paler, which Harry hadn’t known was possible, and clenched her hands in her familiar’s ruff for a minute. Then she nodded and forced her hands to open. “Very well. You—you realize that we cannot simply fight him.”

“I know. That’s why I’m talking about this ritual. But right now, it’s going to take a long time to put together because some of the ingredients are expensive. I wanted to know if you could buy some of them or gather some of them.”

Mrs. Malfoy blinked several times. Venus gave a little growl but subsided when Mrs. Malfoy touched her neck again. “That is an unusual request. What would I gain from this?”

“I would be grateful. I don’t know what that’s worth to you, but if you wanted some money or something—”

“The favor of someone who commands a golden familiar will be more than enough.”

“I don’t command Golden. We work together.”

“Golden…I had somehow expected a more sophisticated name, Mr. Potter.”

Harry snorted. “I gave it to him when I was three and he won’t let me change it. If you can convince him to be called something else, feel free.”

Mrs. Malfoy actually let her jaw fall a little, and then snapped it back up. Harry had the impression that didn’t happen to her very often. He smiled patiently, and Mrs. Malfoy inclined her head and murmured, “Golden, then. Very well. Are you intending to go into politics when you get old enough, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes,” Harry said firmly. He knew he didn’t mean that exactly the way most people around him did—the way that Cormac’s relatives were in politics in the Ministry, for instance. They meant they wanted to change minds and maybe bribe people and get some attention and power. Harry meant that he wanted to change laws and get people more equal and to stop bowing to wizards and witches just because they had golden familiars.

But for right now, there wasn’t that much difference. He would help people like Mrs. Malfoy and Cormac’s relatives until he got to the point where they couldn’t help each other anymore.

“Will helping one person help you achieve that?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Malfoy waited. Harry just kept his silence. He knew she would probably imagine some devious plan. Draco had kept doing that until Harry corrected him. And Professor Snape liked to imagine plots, too. The difference was that he saw plots that were happening, like the way Headmaster Dumbledore refused to help poor Professor Quirrell.

“Very well. Then in exchange for favors at a future time and your assurance that your friendship with our son will continue, we will help you with this ritual.”

Harry nodded. He thought Mrs. Malfoy didn’t sound entirely happy. Maybe she didn’t think they could do it. She should think better, but Harry would show her that, not tell her that. “Thanks, Mrs. Malfoy. Anyway, this is a list of some of the ingredients that are a problem to get a hold of.” He held out a list he’d written down from the book Hermione had found the ritual in. She’d offered to write it for him, but Harry was the only one who knew which ones to take off because Professor Snape could find them.

Mrs. Malfoy took the list and looked it over. Harry saw her eyes widen, but honestly didn’t know what at. There were lots of things on there that were hard to grow or rare or semi-illegal. “All right,” she said, with a nod, and folded the paper up and put it in her pocket. She studied him for a second. “Why do you want to help Professor Quirrell so badly, Mr. Potter?”

Harry didn’t know what answer she would have expected to that, so he gave her the truth. “Because he’s in trouble.”

Mrs. Malfoy sat back with a faint sigh. “One of the first things you need to know if you go into politics is that it’s never that simple.”

“It is for me.”

Golden nudged him hard in the side. Harry reached out and put a hand on him. Yes, he _had_ seen the way Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes lit up like she’d put fire inside them. He knew what it meant. She thought he was simple. Simple to trick, or she could make him do what she wanted. But it wasn’t true.

“We’ll take that as your motivation for now, then,” said Mrs. Malfoy, and stood up. “Who is helping you on this besides Draco?”

Harry weighed his options for a second. He wasn’t going to tell her everyone, but she would probably discard most of his friends, anyway. So he had to tell her the only adult. “Professor Snape.”

“An excellent choice.” Mrs. Malfoy reached out a hand, and only after a second did Harry realize she wanted him to shake it. The Dursleys hadn’t wanted him to shake _anyone’s_ hand. “Well, Mr. Potter, this was a productive meeting. I will be in touch by owl about what I can find and what I cannot.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy. Please owl me if you need more details about the ritual or Professor Quirrell, too.”

She smiled at him and cast another charm that made her fade from sight, although Harry thought he could still see a little shimmer of movement when she went back up the path. Her familiar growled at Harry as she also faded from sight. Harry sighed and stood up to go back to the school.

Today was a day of meetings. He was going to meet Cormac’s relative from the Ministry department, too, and have to talk about his relatives.

Golden nudged him in the leg and then rambled ahead, sticking his tongue out to sniff for anything small and tasty.

Harry smiled. It was a good reminder that he was never alone no matter what happened.

*

“He really said that? That helping Quirrell is his only motivation?”

“Yes. And I don’t think he’s playing a game, although that familiar of his does shimmer with power. It’s his only motivation. We can easily use him as a figurehead, and teach Draco how to use him, as well.”

Lucius leaned back with a faint smile at the ceiling. Hecate was sleeping next to him now, but he reached down absently and stroked her neck. Narcissa nodded. Her husband and his familiar were powerful; she and Venus were powerful. They might not have as much favor in the public eye as someone with a golden familiar, but they had much more political standing and _under_ standing. In the end, Harry Potter would follow them, never knowing he did so.

“Are we going to gather these materials and go against the Dark Lord?”

“If he is the spirit possessing Quirrell, then he is weak and desperate,” said Narcissa, with a shake of her head. “We can easily spin this as helping him to gain a stronger vessel if he does come back. And I wonder…the Dark Lord had a _silver_ snake and was unwilling to compromise. If we decided that we had more of a future with a child dependent on us, who could blame us?”

Lucius sighed, a happy sound. Hecate whuffled in her sleep. Venus pressed against her. Narcissa smiled, and opened the parchment Potter had given her.

_This is our chance. By the time he wakes up, if ever, he will be wrapped too deeply in our web to withdraw._


	9. Part Nine

“Welcome, Mr. Potter. I hope that you’ll benefit from what I have to say to you today.”

Harry blinked. It wasn’t how he’d expected Cormac’s relative to begin. “Hi,” he said, watching the man as he stepped forwards. He was a tall man, but he had a big belly, and he was wearing dark blue robes with silver edging on the bottom and the sleeves. Harry didn’t know what that meant. Another thing he had to look up. On his shoulder, rubbing her head against his cheek, was a small bronze monkey. “What’s your full name, sir?”

The man laughed gently. “You don’t have to call me that. Just call me Julian. My full name’s Julian Kindle. And this is Sara.” He gently flicked his familiar’s back, and she sat up and clasped her hands in front of her and bowed to Golden. “And I assume that you don’t want me to bow to you and call you ‘my lord’?”

Harry stared at him in disgust. “Who _does_ that?”

“Traditional people.” Julian gestured him towards one of the only two chairs in the room. It actually hadn’t been hard to find a room in Hogwarts that they could meet in. Harry had gone exploring a lot, and sent Golden to explore, and there were dozens of empty rooms. It was kind of sad that there weren’t that many people in Hogwarts. “It’s one of the reasons that Voldemort displeased so many people and didn’t have as many Death Eaters as he might have. He claimed the title ‘Lord’ even though he didn’t have a golden familiar.”

Harry immediately sat up. “You said his name.”

“I see more terrifying things every day than his war,” said Julian, and his face was sad and heavy suddenly. He sat down and flicked his dark hair back out of the way. Sara ran up onto the back of his chair and sat there watching Harry and Golden, turning her head back and forth. “Wounds to minds and souls. You must not be afraid of speaking freely to me, Mr. Potter.”

Harry swallowed. Golden nudged up beside him and rubbed his snout against Harry’s arm. “It’s not as bad as it would have been if Golden wasn’t there.”

“That’s like saying that a broken arm isn’t as bad as a broken leg.” Julian put his chin on his fist and stared at him. “Isn’t it?”

Harry looked away. “Yes.” He felt memories seeping back. Times he’d been lonely because the Dursleys didn’t speak to him for days. Times that he _would_ have had broken bones, but Golden had cushioned him. Times the Dursleys muttered about him being a freak but shut up when he and Golden came into the room.

“You’re tensing, Mr. Potter. Is there something you want to tell me about?”

Harry sighed and admitted, “They hurt me. I just—I don’t like saying it because it _could_ have been worse. And I’ve done some reading,” he added, because he had once Cormac said Julian would be coming to talk to him. “I know that a lot of laws about abuse are for things a _lot_ worse.”

“Most abused children do not have golden familiars, that’s true.”

“But they were still _abused!_ I don’t want you to say that I’m special because I have Golden—”

Julian raised a hand. “I’m not saying that, Mr. Potter. I’m saying that you will be an unusual case no matter what. And people will be outraged. And the person—people?—who put you with the Dursleys in the first place may be more outraged still.”

“I don’t have _proof_ about that.”

“You could get proof, though. Can’t you? Have you thought of questioning the adults in the castle?”

Harry blinked. “How do I know for sure that one of them put me there?”

Julian studied him, then sighed and said, “At the conclusion of the war with Voldemort, there was a group of wizards and witches who opposed him. I only knew three facts about them for certain, other than the fact that several of their members died to oppose Voldemort and his Dark magic. They were called the Order of the Phoenix, your parents were members, and they were led by Albus Dumbledore.”

Harry closed his eyes. “Familiars don’t manifest until you’re eighteen months old or two years, right?”

“That is the usual age, yes.”

“And I was fifteen months old when I went to the Dursleys. So—he wouldn’t have known I’d have Golden.”

“You think Dumbledore put you there, I take it.”

“It makes sense. And I have people who are telling me that he’s jealous of me because I have a golden familiar and he does, too.” Harry licked his lips and suddenly told the truth that he couldn’t tell to Professor Snape and Hermione, because they were so insistent all the time. “But that’s _stupid!_ He’s older and he’s famous and he’s powerful and he has all these things I don’t! What does he have to be jealous of?”

“The first three things you named apply to you as well, Mr. Potter. I don’t know for certain what he would covet that you have, but he has been the only wizard with a golden familiar in Britain for more than a century. I can see him being—uneasy at sharing the top of the hierarchy.”

“Why do you keep calling me Mr. Potter when you told me to call you Julian?”

“Because you haven’t invited me to use your first name, and I would not be impolite. My lord.”

Harry scowled at him. Julian smiled back. “Fine. Please call me Harry.”

“Thank you, Harry. Now. It is true that we can’t know for certain yet whether Albus Dumbledore placed you with your Muggles, but there are professors in the castle that I suspect were members of the Order of the Phoenix—”

“You said you only know—”

“I only know those four facts _for certain_. I suspect much. I would not be surprised if Minerva McGonagall was a member of the Order. She has worked with Dumbledore a long time and was his best student in Transfiguration. Shared magical specialties can create strong bonds between wizards. Now, you might ask her what she knows, and portray yourself as a confused child. She would not willingly help to get Dumbledore in trouble.”

“Is he going to be in trouble?”

“That depends. You still haven’t been clear with me about how bad it was at the Dursleys’.”

Harry grimaced and nodded. “Okay. They didn’t like feeding me. A lot of the time, I got food anyway, because Golden brought it to me. But they didn’t want to give it to me.

“I lived in a cupboard part of the time I was there. My cousin Dudley did this thing called Harry Hunting. Golden kept him from doing that most of the time, too, but he was so stupid that he kept doing it. Well, he couldn’t see Golden, so I reckon that was part of it. They tried to push me down the stairs. They dragged me around by the arm. I did a lot of chores. They called me ‘freak’ all the time…”

Julian listened to him intently, eyes so unwavering that Harry was starting to wonder if he could use Legilimency like he’d read about. Well, if he did, then Harry was convinced he would just use it to get Harry away from the Dursleys. He was pretty unwavering about that, too.

And Harry trusted Julian. He’d already told him about the Order of the Phoenix and the “lord” thing about Voldemort that he hadn’t known.

Julian sagged back into his chair when he finished, and glanced at Sara. She bobbed her head.

“Sara will remember this conversation for me, Harry,” Julian said quietly. “She remembers every word and nuance. A familiar has to be specially trained to do that, and you can’t do it if you have a tin familiar. In most cases, it will be _my_ memory that goes into the Pensieve for the other Ministry officials. Did Cormac explain what a Pensive does to you?”

“My friend Hermione did. She read about it. But what do you mean that it’s in _most_ cases?”

“There have been cases when someone tried to use what’s called the Memory Charm on a wizard from my department investigating an abuse case, to make them forget what they saw and heard from the victim. Sometimes the abusers themselves. But no one can _Obliviate_ a familiar. Sara holds the memory for me.”

Harry swallowed. “You’re worried Dumbledore might do that.”

“Smart lad. Yes, I am. You may think this is not as bad as some other cases, but it is bad enough. And…I do have a certain kind of intuition, as one must to work with children like you, Harry. That intuition is telling me that he will be _displeased_ when he finds out about this conversation.”

“I understand. Um, Julian, why don’t you call him Lord Dumbledore? Did he tell you that you could call him by his last name?”

“No, of course not. I just don’t have any respect for him.”

“Why?”

“If what Cormac has told me is true, you have grander ambitions as a _child_ than he has shown in decades, Harry. Wizards with golden familiars are supposed to receive respect because of their power, but if they do _nothing_ with that power, what are we supposed to assume? Dumbledore has done little to change the classes taught at Hogwarts, or laws, or defend anyone but people he knows personally. He fought Voldemort, but not alone. And Voldemort’s snake was _silver_ , no matter how terrifying he was. It should have been easy for Dumbledore to defeat him.”

Harry had to frown, thinking about Professor Quirrell and the way Voldemort was possessing him. That had to be weird. “Maybe Voldemort knew magic that Professor Dumbledore didn’t.”

“Possible, I suppose.” Julian’s voice was flat. “But I will be happy to help you change our world, Harry. It’s needed it for a long, long time. _Someone_ who has the power to do it should be ambitious around here.”

“You were a Slytherin, right?”

Julian smiled wryly. “I was. But I hear that you’re not hostile to Slytherins.”

“I have friends in all the Houses. My friend Neville is in Hufflepuff, and Hermione is in Ravenclaw, and my friend Draco in Slytherin, and I know Cormac and Ron Weasley in Gryffindor.”

Julian nodded slowly. “Then you have already begun to build from a broader base than Dumbledore managed to. Almost all the members of the Order of the Phoenix who I know or suspect were Gryffindors in school.”

“But not all of them.”

“I don’t know for certain about all of them. Your parents were in Gryffindor, and Minerva McGonagall.”

Harry nodded back. “Okay. Then I’ll ask her. And you’ll take the memories to the Ministry and give them to someone so I can get away from the Dursleys for the summer?” He held his breath as he waited for Julian to reply. He wanted _so much_ to get away from the Dursleys when he thought about it. He hadn’t suffered there all that much, but he’d suffered some, and he knew that people worried about him. He didn’t want them to worry. So he had to get away.

“Yes. It’ll take a few days, but not as long as it normally would. The investigation will go fast because it’s _you_.”

Julian spoke like he thought Harry would be upset. Harry was, a little, but he knew that this had to happen first before he could change things. He bit his lips and nodded. “Okay. Thanks, Julian.”

“Thank you for the amount of hope you have returned to my life. The things I was taught in my youth about people with golden familiars have a chance of coming true after all.” Julian paused. “Would you mind if I did one more thing?”

“What?”

Julian bowed to him. “Just once. My lord.”

Harry could feel his cheeks turning red, although Golden was coiling around and around in a circle that meant _he_ thought it was funny. “Um. Okay.”

Julian smiled at him and left, with Sara waving her curly tail goodbye to him. Harry stood there and just breathed for a second.

He would do this. He would make it so that people wouldn’t _want_ to bow to him, and people wouldn’t want to get all scornful of people with tin familiars, and he would do that over time. This was just the first step.

He calmed down when he thought about that. Then he went to talk to Professor Snape. There were things he’d thought of, and he wanted to see how the ritual to help Professor Quirrell was going.


	10. Part Ten

“Professor McGonagall, can I talk to you?”

Professor McGonagall turned around with a little frown. She had her bronze tomcat walking beside her balancing a stack of essays on his head. Malkin seemed to frown a little, too, or at least his mouth was set in between his whiskers. Golden just looked at him, and he calmed down.

“Of course, Mr. Potter. But perhaps not in the middle of the corridor?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Professor. Can we go to your office?”

“Well, at least no one can say that you’re not a polite young man,” Professor McGonagall muttered under her breath as she nodded to Harry and kept walking up the corridor with Malkin. Harry followed her, wondering. Why did she think he might not be polite? Were people gossiping about him or something?

Golden nudged his hip. When Harry looked down at him, he hissed softly, “ _Dursleys_.”

Right. Of course Professor McGonagall wouldn’t think he was polite if she knew he was raised by them. So Harry got more cheerful. That must mean she knew who had put him there.

They got to Professor McGonagall’s office, which seemed to have everything in the kind of order Aunt Petunia loved and tried to make Harry do. Malkin hopped up on the professor’s desk without disturbing the stack of essays on his head. Harry gasped. “That’s really impressive,” he told the cat.

“You’ll flatter him,” said Professor McGonagall, but she was smiling. She went and sat down behind her desk. “Now. Please tell me what’s wrong, Mr. Potter.”

Harry sat up and looked her right in the face. “Okay. So there’s something I need to know, and I thought maybe you’d know the answer, Professor. Who left me with the Dursleys after my parents died?”

For a second, Harry thought his professor would fall over. But then she nodded slowly. “It was the Headmaster, Mr. Potter. Mr. Hagrid brought you from your parents’ home to the Dursleys, and Professor Dumbledore and I met him there and—left you on the doorstep.”

Golden pressed hard against his leg for a second. Harry petted his head. _Poor Golden._ This was harder for him to hear about than it was Harry. Golden wanted it so that nothing bad would ever happen to Harry. Harry accepted it happened sometimes. “Why were you there, Professor?”

“The Headmaster had wanted me to watch your relatives the day before and see what kind of people they were, to see if they would welcome a magical child among them.”

“Did you _see_ what kind of people they were, Professor?”

Harry couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. He was sorry for it when he saw Professor McGonagall flinch, but he kept watching her. She took a deep, slow breath. “Yes, I did, Mr. Potter. I told the Headmaster that they were the worst kind of Muggles and I couldn’t believe he intended to leave you there. But he said you should have the chance to grow up with family and—and it would be dangerous for you in our world.”

“Hm.” Harry felt Golden press harder against his side. He knew what Professor Snape and Julian would probably say, but Harry had another question to ask. “Is there any way that you can tell what color someone’s familiar will be before it manifests, Professor?”

Professor McGonagall gave him a faint frown. “Not that I know of, Mr. Potter. It can be a source of considerable anxiety for parents who see their children as—more a reflection of themselves than their own individuals. Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking I didn’t have my familiar then. No one knew it would be gold.”

Professor McGonagall immediately came around the desk and knelt in front of him. “You were _not_ left there because you had a golden familiar or no familiar or any familiar, Mr. Potter,” she said fiercely. “You were left there because Professor Dumbledore thought it best. Please, please never think that we thought—that _I_ thought you could somehow survive better because we knew you were powerful. Please never think that you were unworthy of being raised within the wizarding world.”

Malkin was nodding fiercely from on the desk. Harry smiled at him and then hugged Professor McGonagall. She went all stiff with surprise, but she didn’t say anything, so Harry had to say, “I wasn’t thinking about that, Professor. I just thought that maybe people knew I would be powerful and so it would be okay.”

“It wasn’t all right, was it?”

Harry shook his head a little. “No.” He wasn’t going to go into more detail, though. She might go and tell Dumbledore.

Professor McGonagall sighed so deeply that it made Harry’s toes curl, and then she stood up and moved back from him, around the other side of the desk again. “Mr. Potter—Harry. Listen to me. There are people who can help you if your relatives have mistreated you. There’s a department in the Ministry that has that as their sole business.”

Harry kept his face calm and polite as he listened, and didn’t laugh or say he knew, even though he wanted to. After Professor McGonagall finished giving him all the details, he stood up and said, “Thank you, Professor.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Potter. I wish there was something else I could do.”

“Um, actually there is. Professor, could you not tell anyone else? I want to tell them.”

“Mr. Potter, if your relatives have treated you badly, then—”

“I know. But I’m going to handle it. I promise,” Harry added hastily when he saw the way Professor McGonagall drew all her brows down. “Golden wouldn’t let me ever go back on a promise. It’ll happen.”

Professor McGonagall seemed to think about that for a bit, and she glanced at Golden. Golden nodded. Malkin, on her desk, was stalking back and forth with all the hair on his tail standing out, but he calmed down when Professor McGonagall put a hand gently in the middle of his back.

“All right,” she said at last. “If you promise me that you will have the problem corrected by the end of the year, when you have to face your relatives again. Can you do that with sincerity, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes, Professor! I promise!”

Her face softened. “I was sad that you hadn’t become a Gryffindor, but I think now that your House has suited you, Mr. Potter. And you’re friends with some of my Gryffindors, correct?”

“Yes, Professor. Ron Weasley and Cormac McLaggen.”

“They’re good ones to be friends with,” Professor McGonagall said quietly, although she seemed a little surprised at the same time. But Harry had given up on understanding some of the way people felt about Houses. It made no sense to him, like the way that people thought tin and copper familiars were inferior. He just had to accept it existed and then change it. “I hope you’ll find a way around this.”

Harry nodded to her and left the office with Golden silent and thoughtful behind him. It was time to find Professor Snape and ask about the ritual.

And then do some homework. Even though he had tried to convince Golden to hold a quill in his mouth and write, those essays wouldn’t complete themselves.

*

Severus swore under his breath as he watched the owl winging away. He had tried to buy some of the refined silver they needed from the goblins, and the goblins asked all sorts of nasty questions in their message. And then the owl had left without waiting for a reply—no surer sign that they refused to help.

“Professor Snape, sir? Are you okay?”

Severus turned sharply around. Potter was standing in the doorway with his snake beside him, his eyes wide. Severus thought over his words and decided that there had been nothing an eleven-year-old probably wouldn’t be aware of already. He nodded. “Merely having some trouble getting hold of some ingredients, Mr. Potter.”

“Oh.” Potter came a few steps into the room. “Mrs. Malfoy might be able to help with that.”

“You told _her_ about what was going on?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay, sir. I promise that she thinks she’s going to get something out of it, and she’s not going to get what she thinks.”

Severus paused. There was a soul too old for a child behind those green eyes. Potter looked the same as ever otherwise, but—

“You manipulated her?”

“She thinks she’s manipulating me. I think that she thinks I’m weak or naïve or something.”

“And thus she is taken in,” Severus muttered, understanding. He had thought of Potter as naïve at first, too. He must be, if he thought he could walk into Hogwarts and the wizarding world and change things to suit himself when they had stayed the same for so much longer than he’d been alive.

Now he understood what Narcissa had failed to see. Potter—Harry—might be the only one who _did_ have that power, if only because other people would give it to him the minute they saw Golden.

“Yes, sir. So why don’t we let her buy some of the ingredients? You know, the rare ones and the expensive ones. And there are others that you can work on, right? Is there anything I can help with?”

“If you are right about Professor Quirrell being possessed by the Dark Lord,” Severus asked slowly, “why do you want to help him? You recall that this is the man who killed your parents and tried to kill you?”

 _And who was Lily’s doom._ The thought made the center of his chest squeeze tight, but Severus would not say it aloud. The child had enough to deal with.

“I know, sir. But I don’t think Professor Quirrell was a bad man before he got possessed. And maybe we can get Voldemort out of him and make him go possess something else. Or bring his familiar back to life, and then he could possess _her_. I don’t really want to kill anybody.”

“But he killed your parents!”

“Um. I know. I don’t _like_ him, sir. But I don’t want to kill him, either. Do you always want to kill people who hurt you?”

Severus blinked. He would not answer the question, but it made him think some uncomfortable things.

“There are chances that many other people will push you to kill him,” he said slowly.

“Like Professor Dumbledore, sir? And maybe some of the people who think that I’m a hero just because I have a golden familiar?” Harry sighed. “I know. But there’s nothing I can _do_ about that, sir. I just have to keep going, and solve the problem the best way I can. Anyway, I’m going to get a Ministry investigation going. They’re going to investigate the Dursleys at the same time. And I met Julian, who seems nice. And…”

Severus relaxed, for some reason, listening to the child’s chatter. It was true that it would be useful to have someone with deeper vaults than he possessed to buy the expensive ingredients. And it was true that Harry needed to get away from his foul relatives. And it was true that he seemed to have managed to keep this away from Albus so far, since the man would certainly have wanted to keep Harry from meeting with “Julian.”

It sounded all too good to be true, though. Severus was awaiting the moment when the stone wall fell on his head.

Monday morning, it came.


	11. Part Eleven

“I need to talk to you, Severus.”

Albus delivered the words in a clipped, cold way, walking past Severus without a glance in his direction. Fawkes sat on his shoulder and did give a single mournful look back at him. Severus stood frozen in place for long moments.

Shadowstriker dancing on his neck brought him back to reality. They were just outside the Great Hall, and students would walk past any second and be able to see him and gossip to each other. Severus swallowed and began to move, his hand resting on his viper. By the time he claimed his usual seat, his face was as cold as ever.

In reality, he could only begin to guess what Albus had discovered. That Severus was aiding Harry? That he had gathered ingredients for the possession ritual? Severus looked at Albus during breakfast when he thought he could get away with doing so, but he laughed and made as many cryptic comments as always. No way to tell.

Severus did manage to catch Harry’s eye as he stood to go to his first class. He twitched his left arm towards Albus, and saw the boy nod. That was the most he could do right now.

Severus taught that morning in what felt like a daze, although he knew his students would find his words as sharp and their potions as botched as usual. What would Albus do? Place him under some magical restriction, forbid him any more contact with Harry, break through his Occlumency and read his deepest thoughts?

_He won’t sack me. He knows Horace won’t come back, and there’s no other Potions expert in Britain who can match me._

But every other kind of dread dogged Severus’s footsteps as he made his way to the Headmaster’s office at noon, the time they always met.

“Ah. Come in.”

Other than the first word, Albus did sound different. There were no endearments or offers of sweets. Severus still made himself take his seat in his usual chair and in his usual way. Shadowstriker had become silent and watchful, but that wasn’t unusual.

Albus kept Severus waiting while he stroked Fawkes’s breast feathers and made much of him. However, that probably didn’t work the way he intended. It gave Severus time to recover his equilibrium.

_Even if he does manage to ban me from contact with Harry somehow, Harry now has that investigation going in the Ministry. He would still manage to achieve what he wants._

Albus turned to face him, and said, “Severus, I am very disappointed in you.”

Severus blinked. No vaguer lead-in could he have imagined. Of course, that was probably the point, to make him condemn himself out of his own mouth.

“I don’t know why, Albus,” he said. “I have been doing my job exceptionally well. I haven’t even been complaining about the dunderheads in my classes as much as usual—”

“You _know_ that you have been interfering in my plans, Severus. We cannot yet do the ritual to remove the spirit that has possessed Quirinus, and you plan to do it!”

So that was it, then. Severus calmed down Shadowstriker with a touch. Fawkes was only sitting on his perch, watching. Of course, Albus had such perfect command of his emotions that his familiar didn’t often reflect them. “I am doing what I believe to be right.”

“No, you are doing what Harry tricked you into. That child, Severus—”

“I know my own mind better than to be _tricked_ by a child, Albus.”

“But how can I assume that you would do something so reckless for James Potter’s son?” Albus shook his head, and then held out his arm. Fawkes stepped from his perch to Albus’s shoulder, his eyes never leaving Severus and his viper. “You would not. Everyone who knows you would agree on that. That means it must either be a trick, a promise of power, or, of course, the well-known way that an untrained child with a golden familiar can influence people without meaning to.”

Severus froze. He hadn’t thought of that bit of lore, because there had been no children with golden familiars in so long, but he remembered it now. Magic spread around such people and their familiars like a puddle of rainwater. It could bend wills, change minds, make unreasonable words seem like the definition of reason.

Children who did that were—contained. There were ways of doing so that would leave them fundamentally unable to use their spreading magic, only intentional spells powered by a wand, until they were seventeen. Then they would be released from their bindings and expected never to use such magic again. They were adults and should control themselves.

If Albus accused Harry of such a thing, then there would be no end to the distrust that Harry would experience. Other people would question their every interaction with him, their every positive thought towards him. The investigation he had started in the Ministry would halt. His classmates would shun him. Some of the old traditional families might even take their children out of Hogwarts, to have them examined by Mind-Healers and make sure they hadn’t been influenced by Harry’s magic.

Severus didn’t _think_ he had been warped by Harry’s magic in that way, any more than he was by Albus’s anymore. But no one would believe him.

“If…”

Severus looked up. Albus was watching him with serious eyes. He nodded once Severus looked at him.

“ _If_ I make the accusation. I don’t have to. There’s no reason that anyone ever has to know of young Harry as anything but a magically talented child and the future savior of Britain. If you back off helping him with the possession ritual.”

“And anything else?”

“Of course anything else, Severus. No extra help with homework. No tutoring for potions. No private meetings. Keep in mind what happens if you don’t.”

Severus took a deep breath and risked his one push. “I’ve read some books that suggest the spreading magic of those with golden familiars isn’t real. Just a rumor invented by someone jealous of their power, who wanted an excuse to constrain them.”

Albus smiled. “Yes, books do say all sorts of things. And newspapers say different ones. At this point in the history of our world, Severus, which one do you think is more liked to be believed?”

Severus swallowed. “Fine. But you will not harm the boy, or I will consider my promise broken.”

“I will only do what must be done for a young child’s good, Severus. To make sure that people aren’t afraid of him, and he has the chance to grow and become what he should be.”

Severus stood up, but the moment was balanced, and he dared to speak the words, because Albus was in a good enough mood not to consider them a threat. “Someone who can never be your rival in power?”

Albus’s face softened, proving even that blow had not gone home. “You have terrible ideas about both me and young Harry, Severus, if you think that he would ever suffer that fate.”

Severus only inclined his head and left. Shadowstriker was dancing frantically around his neck. Severus rested a hand on the snake’s spine, and thought about various ways to communicate what had happened as he walked down the stairs.

Not even Albus could track the movement of every familiar in the school at once. And Harry was a Parselmouth.

“Go and tell Harry what you witnessed,” he ordered Shadowstriker the moment he reached a portion of the corridor outside Albus’s office that had no portraits.

Shadowstriker wriggled into a small opening at the base of a tapestry without protest, even though most of the time he hated leaving Severus. Severus straightened his spine and kept walking, although he had never felt less like going and teaching his afternoon classes.

He had chosen his side. He had no idea at the moment what he could do to _help_ that side other than warning Harry. But it would be something.

*

“ _I understand_ ,” Harry told Shadowstriker, and sighed. The silver snake’s recollections had sometimes been confused, but he knew enough to know that Dumbledore had threatened Professor Snape, and he would have to back off. “ _Please go back and do everything you can to make sure that he feels thanked_.”

Shadowstriker bobbed his head in what could have been a bow or a nod and then slid back into the little crack in the wall that he’d come out of. Harry sat back against the big stuffed chair in the Hufflepuff common room that he liked and petted Golden while he stared into the fire.

“Is there anything I can help you with, Harry?”

Harry blinked up at Cedric. The older boy was giving him a concerned look. His bronze leopard familiar, Nebulous, sniffed noses with Golden. Harry smiled a little. Nebulous was one of the few animals who never treated Golden any differently, just like Cedric never treated Harry that way.

“No, thank you, Cedric,” he said. “Unless—can you tell me if people think people with golden familiars are dangerous?”

“Well, of course you can be,” said Cedric, and gave him a thoughtful look. “But it doesn’t mean you _have_ to be. You can help people with your power just as much as you can hurt them. Has someone been telling you that you’re dangerous, Harry?”

“I just wonder if people are going to start fearing me.”

“ _No._ Don’t worry about that. You know that no one is falling all over themselves to help you—”

“Well, I mean, I made a lot of friends in a lot of Houses—”

“And there are still people who ignore you, and people who say ignorant things about you.” From the frown Cedric was giving, some of those people were Hufflepuffs. “No, don’t worry about it. I know people will stand behind you.”

“All right. Thank you, Cedric.”

Cedric gave him one more smile and went to bed, nodding at Harry as he did so. “It’s curfew soon. You should go to bed. You need your sleep.”

“I will,” Harry promised, and sat up only a little while longer, stroking Golden, before he went to his bedroom and curled up in his bed. It was next to Neville’s.

It was possible that he hadn’t understood everything Shadowstriker had said, or Shadowstriker hadn’t understood everything. But Cedric had made him feel better.

*

Severus stiffened in surprise when two wizards in the robes of Aurors marched through the doors of the Great Hall. The students gasped, and one of the second-years at the Ravenclaw table asked in a tone of confusion, “Aunt Irene?”

Other than a fleeting smile, neither of the Aurors acknowledged the children. They took up stiff guard poses on either side of the doors, their wands drawn. Marching behind them came Minister Fudge, a tall wizard whom Severus didn’t know, and Amelia Bones. Severus leaned slowly back in his seat, his eyebrows rising further.

“Can I help you, gentlemen, Madam Bones?” Albus sounded completely warm and genial, but Fawkes had ruffled all his feathers out and was watching the visitors carefully.

Bones looked at him with a fierce scowl. Her silver tiger familiar, crouched next to her, rumbled threateningly. Severus had heard that she called the tiger Phantom, and that, drawing on a mixture of his magic and hers, he could pass through walls and materialize inside hidden rooms and hostage situations.

“I want you to explain, Albus Dumbledore,” Bones said, “how you could leave a child who is the savior of our world and born to the gold with abusive Muggles. I want an explanation _now._ ”


	12. Part Twelve

Things seemed to move very quickly after that.

Harry stood up with Golden rearing beside him. Madam Bones glanced at him and smiled, although her tiger never took his eyes from Dumbledore. “Ah, there you are, Mr. Potter. You realize who we are?”

“I, um, I’ve seen your picture in the papers a few times, Madam Bones,” Harry said in a dazed way. “And Minister Fudge, too.” The Minister was sweating and looked unhappy, but he also smiled at Harry. Harry glanced at Julian, who had walked in behind Madam Bones, and nodded at him. He wasn’t sure if he should say that he knew Julian or not.

“Good.” Madam Bones faced Dumbledore. “Could you come down and take us to your office, Albus? So we could discuss this in private?”

Dumbledore sighed and walked slowly down from the Head Table. Fawkes was flying next to him. He landed on Dumbledore’s arm and looked around, but Harry couldn’t see what exactly he was looking at.

“I’m sure we will find that this is a misunderstanding,” Dumbledore said.

“Oh, we might,” said Madam Bones. Her voice was sharp. “But we can’t find that out until we discuss it, can we? Come, Mr. Potter.”

Harry squeezed Neville’s shoulder, because Neville was trembling next to him. His Gran, who he talked about all the time, had told him that he would probably go to prison if he ever saw an Auror, Harry knew. He didn’t think much of Neville’s Gran. “I’m going to be all right,” he said quietly, and waited until Neville nodded before he walked away. Golden slid next to him.

Madam Bones and Minister Fudge were both gaping at him. “So it _is_ true,” Harry thought he heard Minister Fudge mutter.

Harry blinked at him. Did he think the photographs in the newspapers lied? Harry knew there had been a lot of them.

“It is,” said Julian, enough under his breath that Harry didn’t think Dumbledore would hear it as he walked ahead of them. “That and all the rest.”

Fudge swallowed nervously. Harry ignored that as best he could and followed them up the stairs and around the corner.

They climbed some more stairs until they came to the Headmaster’s office. Dumbledore walked in and sat down behind his desk. Madam Bones didn’t sit down, standing and facing him, and Harry felt Golden nudge his hip not to sit, either. But Minister Fudge and Julian took the two chairs that were there. The Minister’s familiar was a copper bird with a really long tail who sat on his shoulder and fluffed its tail feathers out every now and then.

The Minister saw him looking, and smiled. “This is my bird-of-paradise, King.”

“He’s very handsome,” Harry said, which made King puff out and strut so much that Harry thought he was going to fall off the Minister’s shoulder. “This is Golden.”

“Young when you named him?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Minister chuckled and started to say something else, but Madam Bones interrupted. “We’re in private now, Albus. I want to hear _exactly_ what you meant by leaving young Harry with Muggles.”

“I intended only his good.”

“That is not the story _I_ heard.”

“Now, Amelia. Are you questioning the word of someone with a golden familiar?”

 _That’s right, you can’t do that unless it contradicts Pensieve memories or something,_ Harry thought, his heart sinking. He caught Julian’s eye, though, and Julian looked smiling and calm. Even his monkey was leaning against his neck instead of sitting up and wringing her hands. So Harry relaxed as much as he could and looked at Dumbledore and Fawkes.

“Of course not,” said Madam Bones, with a smile that Harry thought was nasty. “If you said that you intended only his good, then I have to believe you. But I can still question your _actions,_ Albus. Are you aware that they made him sleep in a cupboard? That they tried to push him down the stairs? That his familiar had to act to protect him and even feed him?”

Dumbledore blinked several times. Then he turned and gave Harry a deeply disappointed look. “Did you tell these—exaggerations, Harry?”

“Are you questioning the word of someone with a golden familiar, Albus?” Julian drawled.

 _He really enjoyed saying that,_ Harry thought. Even though Julian still looked calm, he was sure of what he was thinking.

“Of course not.” Dumbledore reached up and stroked Fawkes’s feathers. He looked calm, too, but Harry didn’t think he was. “But I do know that sometimes children say things they don’t mean. Or they might—influence someone to say things they don’t mean.” He looked at the other adults as if they should know what he was talking about. Harry didn’t know.

“Impossible,” Madam Bones said. She drew out something from her pocket. It looked like a silver coin. But she put it on Dumbledore’s desk and tapped it with her wand, and it started to grow. When it was bigger than her head, Harry blinked. It looked like a giant silver bowl. “Such spreading magic can’t influence familiars. And we have here the familiar’s testimony recorded as a Pensieve memory.”

Dumbledore smiled. It looked strained. “You never know what someone with a golden familiar can do—”

“Yes. Like place a child with abusive Muggles.”

Harry swallowed a little. Madam Bones wasn’t going to let that go, and that was good. But he wasn’t sure how he felt about having his life with the Dursleys announced in front of everyone in the Great Hall. They might think things were worse than they were. Or they might go to the Muggle world and try to punish the Dursleys.

Harry didn’t want to see them again if he didn’t have to. But he didn’t want them hurt, either.

“I have explained why I did that.”

“And I have explained why we’re talking to you now.”

Dumbledore leaned around Madam Bones to look at Harry. “Your relatives didn’t really abuse you, did they, Harry? You can admit you exaggerated. I know that you don’t enjoy being there. But it is the safest place for you.”

Harry swallowed again. “They did abuse me,” he said. “They were never kind to me. They hated magic. I wouldn’t have been able to eat and stop my cousin from hurting me if not for Golden. And I _know_ that I didn’t have him when I first went there. I know that familiars don’t manifest until someone is eighteen months old. I was fifteen months old. I didn’t have him.”

He was just telling the truth and what he had learned from Julian. He didn’t expect the look of complete triumph that settled over Madam Bones’s face, or the way she turned to Dumbledore as if she was going to jump on him. Her tiger bared hungry teeth and edged closer to the desk, his eyes fixed on Fawkes.

 _No silver familiar can challenge a golden familiar and live, though, right?_ Harry thought he’d read something in a book about that.

Golden writhed under his hand. Harry looked down at him, and the memory passed into his eyes from Golden’s glowing ones. Yes, there was a book page, and it said that no silver familiar could _successfully_ challenge a golden one.

_But maybe he doesn’t want to kill Fawkes. He just wants to keep him busy if Dumbledore does something._

A second later, Harry blinked. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he muttered to Golden in the tone he had used around his relatives, too low for anyone else to hear.

Golden turned his head modestly to the side.

Harry didn’t have the chance to shake down his infuriating anaconda, because Madam Bones purred, “I don’t have to question the word of someone who has a golden familiar, Albus, because this is a matter of simple _fact._ No one’s familiar manifests before the age of eighteen months. There was no way of knowing that he would have such powerful magic or the ability to survive an abusive family.”

Dumbledore took off his glasses and cleaned them on his robes. Then he looked up. The room changed somehow. Harry saw Madam Bones’s tiger stand up and stop growling, and Minister Fudge wiped at his eyes like a drop of water had fallen into them.

Julian sat up, though, and his monkey Sara chittered sharply. Dumbledore smiled at all of them and said, “I think there’s been a mistake. A few exaggerations, some jumping to conclusions. Do you think we can agree on that? There’s no need to _arrest_ me for making a mistake, surely.”

Julian surged to his feet, but Golden was right behind him, whipping most of his body over Julian’s chair and rearing up so that he was staring into Dumbledore’s eyes. Dumbledore staggered sideways. Fawkes made a shrill sound and fluttered over to his perch.

Madam Bones and the Minister sagged a little to the side. Then her tiger was growling again, and the Minister frowned and sat up, and Golden slithered off Julian’s chair and down to Harry’s side. Harry blinked at him. “What was _that_?”

Golden rippled at him. Julian said in a flat voice, “That was the spreading magic of someone with a golden familiar.”

“I swear that I was not using it.” Dumbledore gave them all an angelic smile. And they had to believe him, Harry realized.

“Then you will not be charged for that,” Madam Bones said, in an even flatter tone than Julian had used. “You will only be charged for placing a child in a dangerous situation, one that you had no legal claim to. I’ve seen the Potters’ wills, Dumbledore. They charged you to take care of him if several other people were already dead. A few of them are, including Peter Pettigrew, or disqualified by means of being in Azkaban or incapacitated. But you did not reach the end of the list. You jumped over it, and _that_ is a crime.”

Dumbledore stared at her. Then he said, “I didn’t know,” and Harry thought that was the truth.

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” And Madam Bones relished saying _that_ , Harry could tell. She reached out and rested her hand on her tiger’s ruff, and a glowing silver chain of magic connected them, flaring up and shedding sparks on the floor. “Now, are you going to come quietly, Albus, or are you going to make a mess of things?”

Dumbledore seemed to be thinking about it. For a second, he caught Harry’s eyes. Harry just looked back at him. He honestly didn’t have much of an explanation for anything right now, including several things Golden had done.

Dumbledore slowly held out his hands. Madam Bones placed cuffs around them that Harry thought looked almost like Muggle ones, except these were made of pure silver etched with gold. A similar, small cuff went around Fawkes’s right leg. Then Madam Bones picked up Fawkes’s perch and called, “Irene! Howard!”

The two Aurors who must have followed them from the Great Hall came in. Their familiars, a tin muskrat and a copper bulldog, came behind them.

“Take the Headmaster to the Ministry,” said Madam Bones, and they took the chain that attached to Dumbledore’s cuffs and led him away. Madam Bones shook her head a little and carried Fawkes’s perch herself.

“We will discuss holiday arrangements for you soon,” she told Harry in a quiet voice as she passed him. “There are still a few people in your parents’ list of potential guardians who are around and might be willing to take you. The first one is Augusta Longbottom. My niece Susan told you that her grandson’s in your year here?”

Harry found himself smiling in sheer relief. He would be able to do something for Neville if he went to his house. “Yes, he’s here and he’s my Housemate, madam.”

“Good.” And then Madam Bones swept out, and the Minister stayed just a minute more to tell Harry that all would be well, and Julian pressed his shoulder as he passed, giving him a single significant look. Harry almost floated after them, unbelieving that this had gone so well, sure that something would change any second and he would be back in Dumbledore’s office with him enchanting the others.

Harry frowned down at Golden as the memory returned to him. “What did you _do_?”

Golden decided this was an excellent time to slither faster. Harry followed him, scowling at his snake. He needed to learn how to work _with_ him, not just let him do whatever he wanted. Or he would end up the kind of person that he wanted to fight.


	13. Part Thirteen

“You’re going to be fine.”

Julian spoke the words in an undertone as he sat next to Harry and Golden. Harry only nodded to him. He did think that he was going to be fine as long as people told the truth and could resist Dumbledore’s magic.

He had a question to ask about that, too. “Why can’t he just use his spreading magic and get out of the charges against him?”

“Because those cuffs restrict him. The one placed on Fawkes means that he can’t even reach out to his familiar for extra power to his magic.”

“Oh.” Harry blinked and glanced sideways at Golden, who was coiled around the legs of the chair. They’d come to Julian’s office at the Ministry. Apparently they would need Harry to give his side of the case. “Can I do that, too?”

“You have spreading magic, as all people with golden familiars do, yes.”

“But—I mean—”

“You have not influenced anyone that I know of, Mr. Potter.”

Harry shook his head. He was shuddering as he thought about what Dumbledore had done, the kind of thing he could do, too, and the way Golden had acted on his own. “But you haven’t always been right there. You don’t know everything for certain.”

“The spreading magic has to be conscious, not unconscious. And I know that you have not influenced people because I heard the tale of the time you spent with your—relatives. You would have influenced them into leaving you alone if you wished. That tells me your repugnance for the thought of using such magic goes far deeper than your desire to use it.”

“Oh.” Harry bit his lip. He supposed that made sense, but he wished he could know for _sure_. He changed the subject. “Have you ever seen a familiar act on their own the way Golden did?”

“When they knew how to counter some kind of magic and their wizards didn’t.” Julian reached out, and Golden reared up and slithered over to him, flicking his tongue out to scent delicately at his fingers. “For example, I know that Golden countered Dumbledore’s spreading magic. That’s not something you could have done on your own, given that you didn’t know he could even pull that trick. And sometimes the familiar acts to save their wizard’s life or give them exactly what they need.”

“He did that, too. He looked into my eyes and I saw the memory of a book page I’d read.”

Julian paused with his eyebrows creeping up. Then he said, “That is more than I expected him to be able to do. Other familiars can remember the books and bring them to their wizards, but memory transfer is…exceptional.”

Harry glared at Golden. Golden hid under Julian’s chair. Julian shook his head. “Why are you angry at him?”

“I didn’t know that he could do all this,” Harry said, with a bitter twist in his stomach. “He just went ahead and did it without my permission. And I don’t like the thought that I have this spreading magic. I don’t want to—”

“Influence others? Affect others without their permission?”

“Yes!”

“You’ve already done that.” Julian’s voice was gentle. “People react to news of you being born to the gold with gladness or fear or respect, and you can’t keep them from doing that. It would be more wrong if you could. We all move through the world and touch other lives. You want to be careful in how you do that, which is a good thing; certainly Albus Dumbledore has never been careful enough. But you also have to accept the _good_ consequences of such power, Harry. You are allowed to accept things for yourself.”

While Harry was thinking about that, Golden crawled out from under the chair and nudged softly against his hand. Harry looked down at him and caressed his neck. He knew Golden was anxious to be forgiven.

“All right,” Harry said finally. He wanted to change the world. He supposed he couldn’t be upset if he had the power to do so. “But I really need to _work_ with Golden and find out what he can do. He can’t just keep surprising me.”

Julian smiled a little. “Given how much attention this investigation has attracted in the Ministry, you should have a number of volunteer teachers soon.”

*

Albus kept his head turned slightly away from the door as Madam Bones entered. The cuffs were cool against his wrists. Albus had already tried his spreading magic, and the cuffs had glowed gold in the places where gold was already threaded through the silver and then forced the magic back into his body.

It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, but it did underscore how far he had fallen.

“Are you ready to confess, Albus?”

“I have no confession to make. I did what I thought was best.”

He heard the chair creak as Madam Bones took it. Into the corner of his view stalked her silver tiger. He bared hungry teeth. Albus frowned at him. “Control your familiar, madam.”

“Phantom is perfectly under control,” Madam Bones said calmly. “He only senses how much you’d like to hurt me, and reacts accordingly. And I want to know why causing me pain is part of your thoughts, Albus. If you were really sorry for what you did, placing a child with those abusive Muggles, then you would understand my stance, even if you didn’t agree with it.”

“I did not _mean_ to cause him pain.”

“I know. But it happened anyway. And most of the time when that happens, we apologize.”

Albus wanted to cover his face with his hands and sigh, but the chains between the cuffs attached his arms to the chair. “Amelia,” he said, hoping that matching her informality with informality would encourage her to listen to him. “That boy is dangerously uncontrolled.”

“You think a Muggle family would somehow control him?”

“No. But it would teach him humility, that he cannot simply throw around his magic and his name to—”

Amelia laughed. Albus quieted and looked at her. There was a sharp jut to her jaw that he had never seen before.

“ _You’re_ the one who needs to learn humility,” Amelia whispered, above the steady growl of her tiger. “Not that you’ll ever admit it. But the rest of us can recognize reality when it slaps us in the face.”

“You know that I’ll walk out of the Ministry, Amelia.”

“Will you? I wonder. You’ll have trial in those cuffs, Albus. You won’t be able to use your spreading magic to influence us as—I suspect you must have done before now. And you think you’ll be able to interfere in Harry’s placement?”

“You’re not calling him Mr. Potter, Amelia? That shows a dangerous level of intimacy already.”

“You’re not his legal guardian.”

“I honestly had no idea of that. I was so close with his parents, and I was the one who performed the Fidelius Charm for them, although not the one who chose the Secret-Keeper—”

“You aren’t. Apologies would help, but since you won’t give them, and you don’t seem in the mood to confess your wrongs, either…” Amelia stood, shook her head, and walked out of the room. Her tiger remained, staring at Albus. The perch with Fawkes stood in the corner, but given the cuffs around his arms, Albus could not use his familiar to attack the great cat.

Albus leaned slowly back and closed his eyes. He was going to get out of this. And he would make Harry and the rest understand that he had only acted for the best. No one could love someone like blood family could. Lily and James’s fierce devotion to their son proved that. His own ache where he still missed Ariana proved that.

It sounded as though Petunia and her family had not loved Harry the way Albus would have preferred. But they must love him deep down. He must understand, deep down. He was reckless, but one could expect that of a child. If he could grow past that, if he could learn to understand and be understood…

Then Albus’s mission would have been accomplished no matter what he currently sat in chains for.

*

“Mr. Potter. You are Mr. Potter?’

“Yes, um, Madam Longbottom?”

“Mrs. Longbottom will do, child.” The woman stepped forwards and eyed him carefully for a moment. On one shoulder sat a bronze eagle, its feathers all ruffled. Neville’s Gran saw his gaze and nodded. “This is Signora, my Lord.”

“Please don’t call me that,” Harry said, feeling something inside him wilt and die of embarrassment. It would probably be worse when she heard Golden’s name. “This is Golden.”

Mrs. Longbottom only examined Golden for long enough to, it seemed to Harry, see his color, and then she sank down in a curtsey. “If you prefer that I won’t use the title, then I won’t. But I _will_ show respect.”

Harry opened his mouth, then checked himself. This might mean that he would get to have her treat Neville better. “Okay, Mrs. Longbottom. And anyway, I’m excited to come and live with you. Neville is already my friend.”

“I’m glad that he has _one_ friend worth something. Merlin knows that he won’t find many in a House like Hufflepuff.”

“Mrs. Longbottom, please listen to me. Neville is really strong. He’s braver than he knows. He keeps going to Potions class every day even though the teacher terrifies him. And he would help me with anything I asked for. He’s _loyal_. And he has a work ethic. Are those bad things?”

“I wanted him in Gryffindor. His father was. Neville should strive to be more like his father.

“But _I’m_ in Hufflepuff. How can you say that you respect me and yet be upset that Neville’s also there?”

Mrs. Longbottom paused. Harry was actually glad to see the way her face worked. It meant that she wasn’t just going along with whatever he wanted, the way she would have if his spreading magic was an issue. He wanted to let people have their free choice.

Across the office, Julian gave him a small, amused smile.

“Neville has a strong legacy to live up to,” Mrs. Longbottom finally said. “And so far, he has shown _no_ signs of being worthy of that heritage.”

“But you could say the same thing about me.”

“Nonsense! You were born to the gold.”

“But I haven’t done a lot with it so far, have I? I haven’t changed the world yet. Don’t you expect people with golden familiars to do that by the time they’re eleven years old?”

“Perhaps these are the first of those changes,” Mrs. Longbottom muttered, but she was looking at him thoughtfully. “You think Neville has the potential to become something more?”

“Yes. But he needs some things. He needs to know that you love him and respect him, too.” Harry took a deep breath. “And he needs a new wand. I’m sorry, Mrs. Longbottom, but he’s just not compatible with his dad’s.”

Mrs. Longbottom frowned harder. “That was his _father’s_ wand.”

“But Neville’s not his dad. I’m sorry,” Harry repeated, when he saw how Signora was stretching her wings. “But he’s not. He needs his own wand so he can have his own kind of greatness.”

“I imagine that you think he’ll grow something valuable in the greenhouses?”

“Why not? Professor Aurora Black did.”

Mrs. Longbottom frowned harder. Harry thought she just didn’t want to admit that she’d never heard of Aurora Black, who was a Herbology genius and one of the first wizards to come up with ways to combat dangerous plants like mandrakes. She should have heard of her, living with Neville, who talked about her all the time. “Hm. Well, all right. I’ll escort you back to the school now.” She nodded to Julian and turned away.

“You’ll be summoned to testify formally soon,” Julian said quietly, and put away the notes that he’d taken from talking with Harry earlier. “Both about the investigation into Professor Quirrell and into Dumbledore.”

“All right.” Harry shook his arms out. He felt tired, but at least he’d probably got Dumbledore out of the school for a while and got some help for poor Professor Quirrell and got Neville into a better place.

_Not a bad start._

He told Julian good-bye and followed Mrs. Longbottom, eyeing Golden as he did so. Golden crawled along and acted oblivious of the way that everyone in the Ministry stopped and stared at him. Harry was glad when they got into a lift that was empty except for them and that couldn’t happen anymore.

Mrs. Longbottom chuckled suddenly. Harry looked up at her. She gave him a thin smile and said, “It will be a pleasure to ride behind you as you change the world, my Lord.”

Harry didn’t roll his eyes, but only because he tried really hard. _Why can’t I just change the world and not be called that?_


	14. Part Fourteen

“Is it true that you were abused?”

Harry sighed and put his book down. He was working with Golden in the library, seeing how well they could communicate with each other when he looked at a page and then tried to see it through Golden’s eyes. But he could only do that some of the time, with how often people were coming up and asking him questions.

“I’m sorry.” The boy suddenly sounded embarrassed. “I suppose I shouldn’t be asking you this.”

“It’s okay.” Harry smiled at him. He was a boy in Ravenclaw colors, and somehow he managed to look even smaller than Harry. Harry had thought he was the smallest of the first-years himself. “What’s your name?”

“Derek Stebbins.” The boy shifted the tin sparrow on his shoulder. “And this is Singer.”

“He wouldn’t take any other name, right?”

“No, I named him when I was two, and he won’t _stop_.”

Harry laughed as he watched Singer nibble at Derek’s ear. “I know, my familiar’s like that, too. Anyway, this is Golden. Why don’t you sit down across from me and then I can tell you more about my relatives?”

“Um, okay.” Derek sat down, and swung his legs, and suddenly seemed a lot more interested in Harry’s book. “You don’t have to answer. If you don’t want to. My gran’s always telling me that I need to think before I speak.”

Harry looked at him thoughtfully. “You should, but you should ask questions, too. Anyway, my relatives didn’t want me. My aunt was jealous of my mum’s magic, I think. None of them could see Golden, so they didn’t know what kept them from hurting me, but they tried to. Hurt me, I mean.”

Derek looked up at him with wide eyes. “Why?”

“They didn’t like me.”

“I mean—that’s it? That doesn’t sound like a good reason for hurting someone.”

“I don’t think there’s a good reason for hurting someone unless you’re trying to protect someone else. Yourself would count.” Harry looked more closely at Derek. He was listening with his head tilted to one side like Singer. “What are some of the reasons that you think are good for hurting someone?” He was just making a guess, but he knew he was right when Derek jerked and turned pale.

“Wh-what?”

“You’re Muggleborn, right?” Harry asked quietly. “And you asked me if they had some other reason for hurting me. Who told you that hurting _you_ was okay? What was the reason?”

Derek glanced away from him. Then he said, “You have to understand. My mum? She had me when she was really young. Like fourteen. Or fifteen. My gran never really said. But it was _young_.”

“Okay.” Harry didn’t know what that had to do with someone trying to hurt Derek, but he just wanted to listen and not judge.

“And my gran had my mum young. So my gran’s only like forty-five or something.” Derek ran his tongue around a tooth. “She’s upset that she has to raise me because my mum dumped me on her doorstep and ran off somewhere. She wants to be able to go out and have fun. And she doesn’t want me there when she brings her—her blokes around.”

Harry could see where this was going, but he just nodded.

“Some of the blokes don’t want a little kid around anywhere. They—they get rough, you know? I don’t think they want to hurt me. They’re just pissed.”

“I know.”

“So my gran doesn’t stop them, and then I hide in my room and they can go out and have fun. And Singer, he tries to stop them, sometimes, but he’s _little_. And I don’t have that much magic. I didn’t even know it was magic I was doing at first, but then I came here, and I found out what it means, ‘cause Singer is the color of tin. That means I’m _weak_.”

“It does _not_ ,” Harry said, and Derek looked at him with his eyes and mouth wide open. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m not scared!”

“But I want to change that. Everyone thinks I’m so special and I can do anything because I have a golden familiar, but I want to do things because they’re _right_. The Dursleys thought they could hurt me because they thought they were stronger than me. They couldn’t see Golden. And if I didn’t have Golden, they would be stronger. Would that make it right for them to hurt me?”

“No, of course not,” said Derek after a minute that felt really uncomfortable, probably for both of them. “But—”

“Then it shouldn’t be right to hurt people in the wizarding world just because they have tin familiars, either. Or copper, or bronze, or whatever. I know that lots of people will do whatever I say because I have a golden one, but I have to change that, too. Someday they _won’t_ , because they’re believe they’re just as good as me.”

Derek blinked, hard. Then he said, “Is this because you were abused?”

Harry stopped and thought about that. He knew what he would have said if Julian asked him that question, but Derek was another kid. Finally he said, “Part of it. But not the whole thing. Some of it is just right. Why do you think everyone wanted to do what Dumbledore said?”

“Because he was _Dumbledore_!”

“What do you mean?” Harry hadn’t expected that. He thought Derek would say because he had a gold phoenix, or because he was Headmaster.

“I read all about the things he did,” Derek said enthusiastically, and for the first time, he really sounded like a Ravenclaw. “Like defeating Grindelwald and discovering the twelve uses of dragon’s blood and standing up to the Ministry. He’s a hero. That’s why they want to follow him.” He looked up at the scar on Harry’s forehead. “Just like they want to follow you because you defeated You-Know-Who.”

“But people listen to me in the first place because of Golden. And a lot of people listened to Dumbledore because of Fawkes.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Derek hesitated. “But that makes you more powerful, right?”

“No,” said Harry. “Magically powerful, maybe. But remember what I said about people shouldn’t be able to treat you the way they want just because they’re more powerful?”

Derek nodded. “But isn’t that, like, tricking people? You get them to do what you say because they’ll follow someone with a golden familiar, and then you turn around and tell them that you don’t want them to do what you say because people shouldn’t just follow people with golden familiars.”

Harry grinned. “It is sort of tricking them. But at the moment, they won’t listen to anyone except someone with a gold. So I’ll talk until they realize there are other reasons to listen.”

“You’re all right, Potter.” Derek seemed relaxed now. “Granger said you were, but I wondered about your relatives. Can I study with you?”

“Yeah.” Harry held out his book. “Have your familiar read this. Then see if he can send it to you.” He was determined to see if it worked with familiars other than Golden, and keep going if it did. He knew that golden ones weren’t the _only_ powerful ones. Julian’s familiar had been trained to hold onto memories and she’d kept him safe from Dumbledore’s spreading magic. And she was bronze, not silver. So probably there were things people never tried to get their familiars to do because they just assumed they weren’t strong enough, but they had the power all this time.

“Okay. But Singer doesn’t read very well.”

“Just have him try.”

Derek bent over the book, and Singer landed on the table and stared intently at the words. Harry reached down and stroked Golden’s head. Golden looked as contented as a cat, twisting his head to the side so that Harry could scratch the scales on his eye-ridges.

“This doesn’t get you out of practicing,” Harry muttered at him.

Golden looked innocent.

*

Severus felt stupid as he stood before the barrel-hidden door of the Hufflepuff common room, but he had no idea what to do except to see Harry. He waited until a fifth-year student came out, since they were less likely to quake in fear at the sight of him. This one’s eyes widened, but she nodded to him even while her copper hedgehog rolled into a ball. “Did you need something, sir?”

“I need to speak to Harry Potter.”

“I’ll bring him out, sir.”

She turned and went back into the common room. Severus stood with his hands folded in his sleeves and waited. Shadowstriker was silent around his throat, looking more at the barrels than around for danger. Severus couldn’t remember the last time he’d been—almost relaxed.

“Why do I feel this way?” he asked his familiar. “Numb. I would have thought I’d feel rage at Albus, or joy that he’s gone, but—not this.”

“Are you all right, sir?”

Somehow a small boy and a golden anaconda could still almost sneak up on him. Severus turned around and fought the sneer off his face. He no longer had to keep it there to appease Albus, at least not right now. “I want to know whether you’d like to pick up gathering the herbs and things for the ritual to free Professor Quirrell.”

“Yes, but sir, I only want you to use things that you can pick or gather yourself. Or that you have on hand. Let the Malfoys pay for the rest of it.”

“You know the Malfoys will no longer underestimate you? Now that you have succeeded in taking Albus down.”

“That wasn’t me, that was Madam Bones.”

Severus sighed. “Feigned naiveté does not become you. You know that many would think it was you even if was purely her. You need to think about claiming your power and not letting someone else do it for you.”

There was an odd look on Harry’s face. “I’m coming to terms with that, sir.”

“Then what are you going to do when the Malfoys no longer underestimate you?”

“I’m going to let them think they’re playing me. I’m going to keep being friends with Draco. I’m going to keep fighting my battles to keep people from thinking that people with golden familiars are all-important.”

“But they may do something else. Something dangerous to you. Demand a dangerous price for their aid, for example.”

“Then I’ll deal with that when it happens.”

Severus sighed again and said, “I am merely trying to make you realize that you do not want to be beholden to them.”

“No, I _don’t_ particularly want to be beholden to them,” Harry agreed, surprisingly docile. “But sitting here at the moment and worrying about what they might do, when I don’t have any evidence yet, isn’t productive. I couldn’t just sit there and worry about the Dursleys either, sir. I had to cope with what they actually _did_.”

Severus paused. Then he lowered his head in a slow nod. That actually sounded reasonable. “If Narcissa or Lucius ask you for something more than you want to give, you will come and speak to me at once.”

“Yes, I will, sir. Thank you for helping me with this.”

Severus hesitated. Then he said, “Albus may return as well.”

“I know. But at least _something’s_ going to happen. And now I know what his spreading magic is. And Golden can counter it. I’m going to work on resisting that, too, and making sure I don’t use it.”

Severus wished he could express what he was thinking to the boy in front of him—the hope, the wariness, the weariness, the joy. But he ended up saying, “Of all the people who could be born with the power of a golden familiar, I am glad it was you.”

Harry beamed at him and said, “And I’m glad you’re the one helping me with this ritual, sir.”

He went back into the Hufflepuff common room. Severus was again left alone with Shadowstriker, but this time, he was able to turn and walk slowly up the corridor with his heartbeat slowing in his chest.

If he had to someday call someone Lord again, he was also glad it would be Harry.


	15. Part Fifteen

Albus looked up at the men and women facing him. He was sitting in a chair bound with chains and with his arms crossed low over his stomach. He wanted to shake his head. Had anyone watching him with a disapproving glance done half as much as he had to save and protect the world? Had any of them been strong enough to stand against Tom? They had needed someone with a golden familiar to face a silver so strong, and now they were ready to turn on him.

_How fickle adoration is._

“Albus Dumbledore, we are here to try you for the _act_ of leaving Harry Potter with an abusive Muggle family,” Amelia Bones said. She stood on the floor in front of him instead of up in the gallery. Her tiger sat at her side, never taking his gaze off Fawkes, who was chained to the perch next to Albus. “Not the intention, the _act_. How do you plead?”

“I plead not guilty.”

“Really.”

“I do,” Albus said firmly. He knew they didn’t have to take his word when they had Pensieve memories--in this case, the memories given by that misguided child to a wizard with a familiar trained to receive them—but he could still make his case. “I am no more guilty than someone who thought a child was safely placed out of the way in Diagon Alley and then had them wander into the street. I could not have _known_ his family would turn abusive.”

He saw a few nodding heads in the crowd, and fought not to exhale in relief. Good. He still had some supporters here, then.

“Ah,” said Amelia. “But someone who had injured a child that way might still be tried for the act. A lesser charge than doing it knowingly, of course. But still one.”

Albus stared at her. He had honestly never heard of such a thing. Then again, he hadn’t had much to do with the day-to-day business of the Wizengamot for years. He had his school to nurture, and usually only attended the huge trials where someone was charged with a heinous crime.

“Blame Muggleborns and their influence on our laws, if you want to,” Amelia said to his glance.

She turned and called the wizard with the bronze monkey on his shoulder down from the seats. The man had a cast to his eye that Albus disliked. He knew that sort of wizard. He would have grown up resenting the world around him for his being born a bronze, and now he saw the chance to strike back at the possessor of a golden phoenix.

“Would you be willing to testify as to the conversation you had with Harry Potter about his abusive relatives, Julian?” Amelia asked the man.

“I would,” said Julian, with a bow of his hand, and extended his arm. His familiar ran to the very ends of his fingers, and balanced there the way her non-magical kin would on a branch in the forest. She drew her hands up to her chest and closed her eyes. Albus watched as small silver tendrils of memory emerged from her head and connected with her wizard’s.

When the connection was complete, the wizard began to speak. He talked about neglect, in the end, Albus thought, listening intently. _Neglect_ , not abuse. There were children in the school who had endured worse. Severus had, for example. And Harry had had a powerful familiar to protect him. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

He sighed as he watched the disgusted looks on the face turned towards him. Even if they wanted to follow someone who had a golden familiar as their new Lord, Harry was still a _child_. And, if what Albus suspected was true about the scar on his forehead and his sympathy for Quirinus _was_ true, then he would have to die before he had grown. Why would members of the Wizengamot want to follow an unknown quantity rather than the man who had defended their world more than once?

Julian finished speaking. Albus turned back to him and frowned at the look of disgust the man gave him. Albus had done wrong, yes, but he was still owed courtesy and respect because of the color of his phoenix.

Julian gave him none.

“That is everything he told me,” Julian said, and inclined his head. “I cannot say anything else without Mr. Potter here testifying.”

“We will summon him for this weekend, then,” said Amelia, and sent Julian back to his seat with a casual wave of her hand. “Now. Back to your cell, Albus.”

“You cannot keep me in a _cell_ for the next few days,” Albus said, even as he felt the Aurors standing behind him train their wands on him. With the bloody cuffs around his wrist and the band around Fawkes’s leg, they were stronger than he was. But he kept his attention fixed on Amelia. “That is ridiculous. Immoral.”

“We do it all the time with child abusers.”

“You should do it with the Dursleys, then.”

“When we get hold of them, we will,’ said Amelia, and gestured with her wand. The chains around Albus’s wrists fell away, but new ones attached themselves and coiled about the arm of one of the Aurors before Albus could make any motion.

He looked straight at Amelia, making sure she bore the full force of his displeasure, before the Auror came forwards to drag him away. She only gave him a calm, taunting smile.

She would _pay_ for this. He did not deserve to be chained up and dragged about like a common criminal.

And he would see that she knew it.

*

Harry was coming back from Gryffindor Tower where he’d visited Ron and Cormac. He was glad that Ron was speaking up more now and had even yelled at one of the twins for their pranks and made them back down. He’d felt too worthless for too long. He was just as good as the rest of his family.

And Harry had to make sure to tell Mrs. Longbottom the same thing about Neville when he lived with them this summer.

Golden abruptly lifted his head. Harry paused. He was on one of the staircases down from the second floor to the first, and he couldn’t sense anything. But he trusted Golden’s instincts.

Golden wrapped himself abruptly around Harry, a sideways lunge of his body. Harry tumbled over and slid down a few steps, and he was just drawing his breath to scold Golden when a bolt of power tore over his head.

Harry tried to roll loose. Golden only tightened around him and lifted the upper part of his body up. Harry blinked up the stairs. Professor Quirrell was standing there, his wand aimed at Harry. Alanna crouched shivering next to him. Harry saw a gleam of silver inside her before it disappeared.

“You _are_ a nuisance,” Professor Quirrell said, walking down a step or so. “And I wonder why you make it your business to send your snake to spy on me?” He shook his head. “The answers to those questions aren’t as important as your death, however.” He leveled his wand straight at Harry again.

Golden’s body began to glow. In a second, a yellow haze was hovering around him and Harry. Harry craned his neck impatiently. Right now, he couldn’t see Professor Quirrell, and he thought he might be able to convince him if he could just _see_ him.

Something bounced off the wall, and there was a startled curse. Harry reckoned he had to be glad the wall was there.

“You are stronger than I expected. That’s not going to keep me from killing you.”

“I am trying to help you!” Harry called out. “A ritual that would force the possessing spirit out of your body.”

Professor Quirrell was quiet for a second. Then another bolt of power hit the wall and made it shiver even harder. Harry blinked, but then sighed. He should have remembered that Voldemort was there, too, listening. Of course he would be upset at the thought of being forced out and being a wandering spirit again.

“What should we do, Golden?” Harry whispered to his snake. He could feel the coils loosening, and he scrambled out of them and stood up, although he was still within the yellow wall.

Again Golden seemed to be paying attention to something he couldn’t sense. This time, Harry wasn’t really surprised when someone screamed, “Professor Quirrell! What are you doing?” It was Hermione’s voice.

By the sound of it, Professor Quirrell was trying to spin some comforting story. But Hermione didn’t seem to be buying it. Harry knew she didn’t when Regina, her familiar, suddenly leaped over the yellow wall and nipped at his ankle.

Harry turned and ran further down the stairs, with Regina scampering behind him and Golden slithering ahead of him. He hated leaving Hermione behind to handle this on her own, but he wanted to get down the stairs as soon as possible so he could send the familiars back to fight.

*

Hermione was deeply shocked. She knew Professor Quirrell had already attacked Harry in class once, and so she shouldn’t be surprised he was doing the same thing outside of class, but it had been long enough since the first strike that she thought he’d forgiven Harry, or heard about the ritual to expel the possessing spirit and decided to wait and see whether it could help.

Now she backed up in front of him as he advanced towards her. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “You know that Harry just wants to help you!”

“I have grown more powerful under the tutelage of my master,” Quirrell said, giving her a smile that seemed to stretch wider on his face than it should. “But why should I waste time explaining that to you? You are a spoiled little Mudblood, and you know nothing of true Darkness or true power.” He raised his wand. “ _Obliviate_!”

But Hermione had been reading up about defensive magic along with the laws and the rituals and the other subjects she seemed to study naturally since she was Harry’s friend, and she had already dodged behind a pillar. Books cascaded out of her arms; she’d been on her way back from the library when she saw Harry in danger. She hastily fumbled for her wand.

“Come out, little girl, before I do something worse than remove your memory!”

Hermione controlled her breathing as harshly as she could, and then leaned out on the other side of the pillar and aimed her wand. At the same time, a small gleam of silver leaped up the banister, and Regina landed on her shoulder.

Her familiar’s power flooded down her arm and blended with hers, and when Hermione cast, “ _Aguamenti_!”, she knew it would do exactly what she wanted it to.

Water flooded down the stairs and then froze into ice when Regina glared at it. Quirrell slipped a step as he tried to aim at her, and then his rabbit bolted and began to tumble ears over paws. Rabbits weren’t really made for running on ice, Hermione thought distantly before she took off straight towards Professor McGonagall’s office. She was the acting Headmistress while Professor Dumbledore was under arrest.

Quirrell cursed and started after her. Hermione ran faster and hid behind pillars and banisters and around corners when she could. She wasn’t that far away now.

Harry and Golden hadn’t come back, so she hoped they would be okay. That golden wall Golden had conjured said they would be.

And she hoped the library books she had dropped would be okay, too.


	16. Part Sixteen

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Part Sixteen_

The familiars herded Harry down the stairs until he was out of breath and his legs hurt. He kept trying to turn around and go back to help Hermione, but they wouldn’t let him.

“I’m more powerful than Professor Quirrell!” he argued when they reached the bottom of the stairs, whipping around to confront Golden and Regina. “If you keep me here, then he’ll just try to—”

He paused when he realized only Golden was swaying in front of him. Regina had run away, probably to help her witch.

Harry put his foot on the lowest stair. Golden immediately gave him an extremely patient look. It was the kind of look he used to give the Dursleys all the time, even though they couldn’t see it. Harry didn’t like seeing it directed at him.

“You _can’t_ expect me to leave her there,” he whispered.

Golden bobbed his head in a definite nod.

“She could get _killed_!” Harry tried to dodge to the side and around his snake, but Golden only looped himself back in front of Harry. Harry halted, and glared at him, and fumed. Then he decided that he needed to go for help if Golden wouldn’t let him help himself, and started running along looking for the professors.

Luckily, Professor Sprout was walking along the corridor, probably heading to the Great Hall for dinner. She gasped and clutched her heart when he appeared in front of her. “Mr. Potter, you gave me such a fright, popping up the way you did!” she scolded him.

“Professor Sprout, hurry! Professor Quirrell attacked me at the top of the stairs and then he went after Hermione!”

At least his Head of House didn’t waste time staring at him or telling him that such things didn’t happen and he must have mistaken Professor Quirrell’s intentions, the way people sometimes had about his relatives. She hiked up her robes and started running towards the stairs. Harry ran after her. Golden, infuriatingly, seemed perfectly content to glide beside him now, or sometimes next to the professor’s copper hamster.

They reached the top of the stairs, and found no trace of Professor Quirrell, of course. Professor Sprout cast a diagnostic charm of some kind that seemed to satisfy her, and nodded. “He was here. He used Dark magic. And I can find him if I just…” She glanced down at her hamster. “Can you find him, Bryony?”

The hamster sniffed around for a second, and then squeaked and took off down the corridor. Harry followed. He looked worriedly for some sign of Hermione, but he didn’t see her. At least she seemed to be okay if he wasn’t seeing her body anywhere, either.

Professor Sprout was muttering something about being too old for all this running when Bryony suddenly gave another squeak, a shrill one. Then she came rolling back and bumped against Professor Sprout’s skirts. Harry saw why in a moment. Alanna had kicked her.

Professor Quirrell stood with his rabbit next to him and his wand lifted, hammering curse after curse into a door in front of him. Harry thought it was Professor McGonagall’s office. He didn’t know if she was in there, but he didn’t think so, because she probably would have come charging out by now. Maybe Hermione was just hiding in there.

“Quirinus! What in the name of Merlin do you think you’re doing?”

“Taking care of _you_ ,” Professor Quirrell said, and turned so that his wand was pointing at Professor Sprout. “And you’re only copper to my silver. You can’t stop me.”

“Delusional about the state of your familiar, I see,” Professor Sprout said, and then she pointed her wand at the floor. “ _I_ don’t have to fight you.”

Harry glanced over his shoulder to see if Professor McGonagall was coming, but then he turned back when he saw movement. He was afraid Professor Quirrell had started to cast, but he hadn’t. Instead, vines were rising up through the floor of the castle, and they grabbed Professor Quirrell and Alanna and twined around them.

Professor Quirrell made a horrible spitting and snarling sound that Harry worried had hurt his throat. "You interfering old _baggage_ , if you had the slightest idea of what kind of magic you're playing with--"

"I know that it can contain _you_ , Quirinus." Professor Sprout was bending down and feeling at her familar's side. Harry hoped Bryony was all right. "And that's all I need it to do at the moment."

" _Deflueo!_ "

The vines immediately began to blacken and wither. Professor Sprout let out a shocked gasp and staggered back a step. "Where did you learn that sort of magic, Quirinus?"

"None of your business, Pomona."

The vines were already sinking back into the stone, and Alanna was free and hopping around. She seemed scared to come near Professor Sprout and Bryony, but Harry knew that could change in a second. Instinctively, he did what he'd always done at the Dursleys' when he was in trouble and looked to Golden.

Golden was swaying back and forth again, his eyes bright and alert and unafraid, and then he lunged forwards and wrapped around Alanna. She squealed horribly, but at least she stopped moving. And then Professor Sprout murmured, "What am I doing, letting a child defend me?" and snapped her wand down and repeated another spell that brought more vines surging up to hug Professor Quirrell.

They took the professor's wand away from him after a second. Professor Quirrell opened his mouth to say something, and a vine clapped a big leaf across his mouth. Harry laughed for a second before he winced. It looked like something he had wished would happen to Dudley when he was whining about getting more presents, but Professor Quirrell wasn't Dudley.

"Are you all right, Professor Sprout? Is Bryony okay?"

"Yes, we are, Mr. Potter." Professor Sprout adjusted her pointed hat and turned to look at Alanna. "She doesn't look well. Do you think that the professor's sickness could have influenced her?"

"I think she's sick, and so is he." Harry wasn't going to tell anyone about the possession who might get upset and not believe him. "But I don't know who got sick first."

"Of course not, Mr. Potter." Professor Sprout gave him a soft smile. "Forgive me for asking you. One turns instinctively to a wizard with a golden familiar for help, but I forget that you're a student sometimes."

Before Harry could answer, the door of Professor McGonagall's office opened. Hermione crept out with Regina on her shoulder chattering and showing her teeth. She gasped at the vines. "Is Professor Quirrell in there? Is everything okay?"

"More than all right, Miss Granger," Professor Sprout told her. "I do have to report this to the Headmistress. I'll find her, however. You should both return to your common rooms." Bryony bounced out from behind her and did her best to herd them around the corner and down the stairs after Golden had let Alanna go. Hermione went only reluctantly. Both she and Regina kept looking back at Professor Quirrell until he was out of sight.

"It's kind of awful, isn't it?" Hermione said in a low voice when she and Harry had got to the point where they had to split so she could go up to Ravenclaw Tower and he could go down to the Hufflepuff common room. "That a professor could be possessed and want to cooperate with the possessing spirit?"

Harry nodded. He opened his mouth to say something and then Hermione turned so pale that he reached towards her. She had to have some hidden wound she was losing blood from. "Hermione, what is it?"

"My library books! Did you see them?"

*

Severus sat back in a corner of the meeting room, frowning. Albus had rarely called all the professors together except at the beginning of the year and the end, to focus on matters that needed to be settled before September 1st or the summer, or to make an announcement about something frivolous. Minerva seemed even less likely to make grand announcements, and it was the middle of the term.

But she was standing in the midst of them, looking gravely from face to face as if it would help her come to a judgment about something. When the settling into seats was done, she said, "How many of you knew that Quirinus was possessed?"

Severus forcibly kept himself from reacting, looking around at the gasps and starts. Pomona looked old and weary, and the only other one who wasn't surprised. Sybill said hesitantly, "But he can't have been possessed. I would have seen it."

"He still is possessed," said Minerva. "A very powerful spirit; I know enough soul-magic for that. And I fear that his familiar is possessed as well." She shifted Malkin on her shoulder. He leaned down and sniffed at her in a way that Severus knew meant he was offering comfort.

"That's impossible, Minerva! Our familiars die when our bodies do."

"Unless the possessing spirit never died at all."

Severus didn't intend to speak; he was simply reacting to a daft statement automatically, the way he would when he saw it in a student essay. Minerva turned piercing eyes on him. "Then you suspect what spirit this is, Severus?"

"Yes. The Dark Lord."

At a different time, Severus would have enjoyed watching the pale faces and hearing the moans of despair and disbelief. Now, he was mostly wondering how Minerva had found out. Had something happened to Harry? To Golden?

Shadowstriker tightened around his throat in his own version of comfort. Severus closed his eyes and stroked his scales. Yes, thinking about it, he suspected his serpent _would_ know if something had happened to the most powerful snake familiar in the school.

"But You-Know-Who is dead!"

"It can't be him!"

"How in the world would you know a thing like that, Snape?" Aurora's voice was openly distrustful, and her eyes flashed to his left arm so fast that she would have had plausible deniability with most people other than Severus.

"The Dark Lord probably did not have enough humanity left in him to die," Severus said. He hated that he was echoing a sentiment Albus had spouted, but with this particular audience, that might make his words' impact all the stronger. "It would make sense that he had survived and managed to bring the spirit of his familiar along with him. I would speak to Mr. Potter if I were you, Minerva. He has told me about being able to see a silver snake within Quirinus's rabbit, and since Mr. Potter both has a golden familiar and is a Parselmouth..."

"Mr. Potter never mentioned that to me when I caught Quirinus attempting to annihilate him and Miss Granger today!"

"Perhaps he thought he should keep the secret," Severus told Pomona.

"I'm his Head of House, though!"

Severus said nothing about how ineffective he thought Pomona was as a leader for the badgers. His silence said it for him. She began to flush, but Minerva interrupted. "Would Mr. Potter be willing to bring those conclusions into the open, Severus?"

"Not if you intend to send Quirinus to Azkaban without attempting to help him," Seveurs said blandly. Shadowstriker had relaxed again, while Malkin had pointed his whole body forwards, which Severus felt should be the natural state of things when he and Minerva were dealing with each other. "Mr. Potter is determined to free Quirinus's spirit from the possession. Granted, that may be hard if the fool gave the Dark Lord _permission_ to take over. But Mr. Potter still wishes to try."

"He assaulted one of my badgers!"

"And apparently another student, given what you said about Miss Granger, Pomona," Minerva finished with a small sigh. "Very well. It will be more difficult, but I will approach Mr. Potter about sharing his research with us openly. And I do not think that anyone will be eager to have Quirinus teaching students of any House now." Heads shook fervently around the room. "That does leave us with the problem of finishing up the year with a competent Defense teacher..."

Severus relaxed even further as the debate began. So, for right now, the issue of the idiot's possession was out in the open, and no one had died.

It depressed him to realize how low his standards had become.


	17. Part Seventeen

“Do you understand why you are here?”

Hermione looked around the room. Honestly, on a first glance _she_ definitely couldn’t understand. Harry was there, and Ron, and Draco, and Professor Snape. But not Neville, and not some of the other people who she knew had worried about Harry or become his friends, like Cedric or Cormac.

“No, Headmistress,” she said. A few of the others murmured the same, but Draco sat up with Kali flapping her wings importantly on his shoulder and gave the right answer.

“Because we’re the ones who have helped Harry the most with trying to make sure that Quirrell gets help with his possession.”

“ _Professor_ Quirrell, Mr. Malfoy. But that is correct.”

“I’m sorry, Headmistress. But I’m not going to call someone ‘professor’ who tried to murder two of my friends.” Draco’s jaw was so stubborn that Hermione thought rocks would crack on it.

Headmistress McGonagall frowned at him, but didn’t say anything else about it. She turned to Professor Snape. “Do you want to explain to them what we have decided to do about the possession ritual, Professor Snape?”

Hermione watched as the man glanced carefully around the room, as if studying all of them for signs of backing out. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him, because he nodded and said brusquely, “We now have the backing of the Hogwarts staff. We can gather the ingredients openly, while they will keep Quirinus imprisoned. We did think of turning him over to the Aurors, but either they would simply cast him into prison, which would do nothing to resolve his possessed state, or they would mess up somehow and manage to release him.”

“What about Madam Bones?” Harry asked. He looked thoughtful, and he was touching Golden’s head as if strength was flowing up to him from his snake’s neck. Hermione could understand that. She’d had to cuddle with Regina for a while when she found out that one of the books she’d dropped when Professor Quirrell had chased her had a bent page.

“Madam Bones is so strictly devoted to the letter of the law that I fear what she would say in response to the actions we have already taken.”

Headmistress McGonagall looked as if she disapproved, again, but not as if she disagreed with Professor Snape. “And there is the fact that she is handling the former Headmaster’s trial, and I would not wish to distract her from that.”

Hermione blinked a little. She knew that other kids broke the rules all the time, but this was the first time that she had seen other _adults_ breaking the rules.

Wait, no, that wasn’t true. Professor Dumbledore had already broken a lot of rules; it was just that people usually made excuses for him because he had a golden phoenix. Sometimes, she supposed, breaking rules was necessary, even for people who were professors or Headmasters of schools. Otherwise, how could they confront the other adults who thought it was all right?

Professor Snape and Headmistress McGonagall exchanged a few looks and then turned back to them. “In the meantime, we can take over gathering the ingredients for the ritual and making sure that nothing happens to Professor Quirrell or his familiar while they are in our custody. We do ask that you give us the notes that you’ve made and any useful books that you’ve found.”

Harry glanced up from touching Golden. “But what happens when you begin the ritual, Headmistress?”

“I’m afraid that I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Potter.”

Hermione winced, because _that_ tone would make her shrink down and stop asking questions at once, but it didn’t seem to intimidate Harry. “I just mean that I read about the ritual. It has to be sincere. It has to have at least one person in it who forgives the possessed person for what they did. I don’t know if you or Professor Snape can do that. Or Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy. But I can.”

“Mr. _Potter_ —”

“You will not be attending the ritual.” That was Professor Snape, and he did sound almost exactly like Hermione’s mother. Hermione found herself bristling before she thought about it.

“But that’s a requirement of the ritual,” Harry said patiently. “Sometimes it could be the possessed person themselves. I read about that. They can forgive themselves for making the mistake that caused the possession in the first place. But that only works if they want to be free of the spirit. I don’t think Professor Quirrell does, does he? So he needs someone there who he wronged and who can forgive him.”

“I could be that person,” Hermione tried to volunteer, but she shrank back again when she saw the looks that the professors were giving her.

“Neither of you will be that person. This ritual is no place for children,” said the Headmistress.

“But can you forgive Professor Quirrell? If not, then the ritual will fail, and all the ingredients and gathering and buying that you did will be for nothing.” Harry leaned forwards earnestly. “Please, think about it, professors. Can you forgive him?”

“I can’t,” Ron muttered. Hermione glared at him. No one had asked him.

“I—would find it extremely hard to forgive him,” Professor Snape said after a moment. Hermione clapped a hand over her mouth so that she didn’t snort or say, “Of course you couldn’t!” Professor Snape was reaching up as if to make sure that his own viper familiar was still around his throat. “And it is true that I do not want the ritual to fail.”

“ _Severus_.”

“Hear me out, Minerva. Can we be sure that the ritual will do what is required if we do not have someone there who can forgive him? Dare we ignore the requirements because we do not like having overlooked them so far?”

“That is not the reason I don’t want Mr. Potter there.” The Headmistress was actually on her feet, with Malkin all fluffed up at her feet. Hermione tried to stay still. “The ritual is too dangerous for a child!”

“It shouldn’t be,” Harry said, sounding a little surprised. “I mean, the part of the person who gives forgiveness is just to speak the words and then stand off to the side, out of the ritual circle. I only planned on being part of the circle in the first place because I thought we would have to do it secretly.”

“You should have come to me from the beginning,” the Headmistress started.

“Hush, Minerva,” Professor Snape said. He was looking at Harry with a complex expression that Hermione tried to figure out and couldn’t. “You really think that we could conduct the ritual and not have it be dangerous for anyone there, Mr. Potter?”

“ _Severus_!”

Hermione put her hand over her mouth again. She’d been about to laugh because she was thinking that Headmistress McGonagall didn’t really have anything else to say.

“Of course, sir.” Harry looked confused. “I read all about it. The circle contains the possessed person and all the magic. The people who are trying to feed the possessed person the potions and burn the herbs step in and out one by one. The other people who are helping just stay outside.”

“If there are gaps in the circle, what is to stop the spirit possessing Professor Quirrell from escaping?”

“They’re warded with special stones,” Harry said, blinking at the Headmistress. “The kind that you need a body to pass. I know I read about that, Headmistress.”

Hermione just wouldn’t be able to take her hand off her mouth for a while. She wanted to laugh. The Headmistress looked flabbergasted. Regina chittered on Hermione’s shoulder, bringing her head down and rubbing it against Hermione’s neck to hide her own version of laughter.

“Then it seems as if we could allow our well-read students to be part of this without endangering them,” Professor Snape says after almost a full minute of silence.

“This is a matter for _adults_.”

“And none of us noticed as fast as Mr. Potter did that there was something wrong with Quirinus, despite working with him for years. Do you really think that we can afford to neglect their aid?”

“I can make myself mistress of this ritual’s workings soon enough.”

“That is not actually the same as dispensing with their aid.”

The professors glared at each other for a while. Hermione blinked some more. Adults arguing like this wasn’t something she’d encountered in the Muggle world, either.

But things were different in the magical world. Hermione gave a thoughtful glance at Harry, who was cradling Golden’s head in his lap now while the rest of Golden draped down the chair, and watching both professors. Harry’s presence changed things.

 _It could unbalance them, too._ But Hermione knew that Harry was aware of the danger and was working as hard as he could on making sure that he made enough changes that, in the end, people wouldn’t stare at him with awe in their eyes anymore and accept his word without blinking.

_If they can just do it for as long as we need to change the world…_

Only much later did Hermione realize that she’d thought of herself as an immovable part of that “we.”

*

The knock came on the office door exactly when Severus had expected it. He opened it, and Harry stepped inside and said, “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yes.” Severus had had Shadowstriker deliver the message. Even if there was the chance that Minerva, if she saw him communicating with Harry, would think it was about the ritual, and most other people would think it was detention, he wanted to keep this private. It was so intensely personal that it made his shoulders prickle.

“What’s the matter, Professor Snape? Did you hear something about Dumbledore’s trial or something?”

“No. I came to a realization of something I wanted to do today, and I needed some time to come to terms with it. I want you to hear me out now, rather than trying to argue me out of it.”

Harry blinked. “Okay, sir.” Golden watched him with intelligent eyes from Harry’s side.

Severus nodded. “You remember that in older times, when there were more of you, people with golden familiars were addressed as Lords.”

“You can’t mean—”

“I want to swear a vow of loyalty to you.”

“You shouldn’t,” Harry said immediately, and his eyes were wide. He took a step backwards, only for Golden to gently push his nose into the middle of Harry’s back and urge him forwards again. Harry still shook his head. “What happens if something happens to me? You would be compelled to defend me. Or you would go down beside me. I’m going to do my best, sir, but people are still going to fight me. I don’t want you to be affected by that!”

“It is because you don’t want me to be affected by it that I wish to swear the vow.”

“Huh?”

Severus smiled a little. Harry was young enough that he didn’t know all the nuances of politics no matter how hard he tried to pretend.

And with Severus at his side, he might survive long enough to learn them. That was one of the many reasons that Severus intended to swear this vow, although not the only important one.

“You would not demand anything from me in the way that Voldemort or Dumbledore did,” Severus said, and drew his wand. “You need not command me. But are you going to say that I _cannot_ protect you or help you?”

Harry looked stumped. “Of course not, sir. I just don’t want you to regret this later.”

Perhaps it was sadistic of Severus to use Harry’s own respect for free will against him, but he would for now. “Then permit me to swear the vow. I will not make it binding enough that I would not be free to act against you, should that be necessary.”

Harry took a moment to work that out, then nodded, his face troubled. “Okay. But—please don’t vow that you’re going to call me Lord all the time, okay, sir? I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Severus had never intended to make the title part of it. What mattered in Harry was his quality, not his title. “Of course not.”

He lifted his wand, and Shadowstriker reared up on his neck and flicked out his tongue, touching it to the wand and then retracting it, repeating the motion constantly as Severus spoke his words. “I vow loyalty to Harry Potter. I will protect him and help him and advise him for as long as he seems to need me. I will never betray him to his enemies. I will never lie to him. I will act in his best interests to the best of my ability.”

The air filled with the soft silver glow that always appeared whenever Shadowstriker was heavily involved in his magic. Severus smiled a little and snapped his wand forwards, the gesture to complete the vow. It settled around him in a motion like a rope wrapping him, and the coils tightened for a second. Then they faded from sight.

Severus could still feel their pressure on his magic, which was part of the reason he had wanted to swear a vow. Much as he hated to admit it, he needed—help, of a kind, to keep himself on a narrow path.

_Perhaps one day I will not._

“Why did you want to do that, sir?” Harry whispered as the last of the silver faded away.

“Because I want to see the world you envision come true, and I can help you do that,” Severus said honestly. “And because I want to be a better person, myself, and this is a chance to do so.”

Harry stared at him intently, then nodded.

“My lord,” Severus added.

“You _said_ —”

“Not all the time. But you will need to get used to this level of respect, Harry, especially since you intend to utilize it until you can convince others that it is not such a good idea to revere golden familiars.”

Harry’s mouth tightened. Then he nodded.

Severus fought to keep from laughing aloud, and not at Harry’s distress. Even with the chains of the vow binding his magic, he felt lighter, freer, than he had in years.


	18. Part Eighteen

“The necessary witnesses for the trial of Albus Dumbledore are present.”

Albus calmly ignored the glares he was getting as the Aurors escorted him to the chair with chains in the middle of the courtroom. Fawkes perched next to him, head drooped to examine the band around his leg. Albus shot him a small glance. Fawkes ruffled out his feathers and shook his wings, which meant he hadn’t figured out a way past it yet.

 _Yet_ , Albus repeated to himself, and looked at Amelia Bones as she strode into the middle of the floor in front of him and turned to face the gallery.

“Esteemed members of the Wizengamot, witnesses for the defense and the prosecution, members of the press and the Ministry,” she began, with pretentiousness Albus could have taught her to lessen. “We are here today to try Albus Dumbledore on the charge of leaving Harry Potter with abusive Muggles.”

“I thought you already did,” someone yelled from the gallery.

“This time, we have all the people needed to testify,” said Amelia, and then glanced over her shoulder. Albus felt a shiver of premonition even before he turned his head. Yes, Harry was walking towards him with his golden snake slithering beside him.

Albus noted that the boy wore no suppression cuffs of his own, much as the snake wore no cuff around his neck. He wanted to shake his head, but refrained. They would most likely learn better later, to their detriment.

One of the Aurors brought a chair, and the boy settled into it, looking somberly at Albus. He was small enough that Albus sighed. Yes, the Dursleys had not been good to the boy. But Albus had been sure that they would be. There was no reason for _him_ to be tried.

“Harry Potter, before we begin we must ascertain some basic facts,” said Amelia. Her voice was softer than before, and her tiger sat with his tail simply wrapped around his forepaws, not on the verge of lunging forwards. _And she still thinks that she is not influenced by the boy’s spreading magic?_ “I want you to tell me if any of the questions make you uncomfortable, and we will come up with a different way for you to answer them.”

“Yes, Madam Bones.”

“You lived with your aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley, at Number Four Privet Drive in Surrey?”

“Yes, Madam Bones.”

“And you did not have your golden familiar when you were first taken there?”

“I don’t really remember, Madam Bones. I’ve had Golden as long as I can remember.”

“Perhaps I may be of some help?” A figure stepped forwards from the cluster of witnesses standing off to the side. “I was with Albus Dumbledore when he dropped off Harry as a baby on the Dursleys’ doorstep.”

Albus felt his eyes widen. He masked it in the next moment with a smile, but he knew he would not forget Minerva’s treachery. Or the way her familiar was puffed-up and glaring at him and Fawkes, for the matter. As if Malkin had the _right_.

“You are Minerva McGonagall, Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?”

“I was. I am now Headmistress, since I was Deputy Headmistress.”

“And why would you have been with Albus Dumbledore when he dropped a baby off at his Muggle relatives’ house?”

“Because I was also a member of the Order of the Phoenix, a group that Albus formed o fight against You-Know-Who in the war.”

There were sharp gasps from several different directions. “The vigilante organization?” a woman in a heavy purple hat demanded.

“Yes,” said Minerva. Albus felt a little better knowing that at least she was incriminating herself as well. “James and Lily Potter were also members. Albus asked me to keep an eye on the house of Lily’s Muggle sister and her husband before he brought the child there, in hopes of finding out what they were like.”

“And what did you say?”

“I thought they were the worst sort of Muggles. I told him so.”

Albus shook his head sorrowfully. “They were not the worst sort of Muggles,” he told the Wizengamot members who turned towards him, obedient as usual to someone who had a golden familiar. “They were very ordinary Muggles. Harry’s blood family. Of course I could not have known they would be abusive, but they were the right people to bring him up.”

“Albus Dumbledore,” said Amelia, standing with her arms folded and her legs slightly apart, “we have established that you ignored the Potters’ wills and went against their _express_ wishes to place Mr. Potter with his Muggle relatives. He had several magical families that were both willing and permitted to take him.”

“He needed to grow up out of the limelight of our world, given his fame.”

“Who are _you_ to decide that?”

“The only other person in Britain besides Mr. Potter who has a golden familiar. Are you questioning as to whether I would know what was best for him?”

That caused a few members of the Wizengamot to hesitate, which made Albus smile. But Amelia kept glaring at him. “Honored members of the Wizengamot, Harry Potter was fifteen months old when he was placed on the Dursleys’ doorstep. His familiar had not yet manifested. There was _no way_ of knowing that he would have a golden one and that that would make him akin to the only person in Britain at the time who did have one.”

Albus shook his head a little. “I could sense his power then.”

“I do not believe that,” Amelia said simply. “It goes against all the accepted canons of magical theory and against all the history we have, in journals like Merlin’s, that tell us the abilities of someone with a golden familiar.” She turned back to Harry, and her face went softer than Albus thought it should. He considered telling them all the truth about Harry’s scar, but he doubted they would believe him at the moment. “Now, Mr. Potter, please tell us more about the abuse that your relatives inflicted on you.”

His snake reared up and danced for a moment beside Harry. Harry put his hand on the snake’s head and calmed it. Albus sighed again. He would have liked to see it lash out and cause havoc. Perhaps that would remind those who were inclined to favor Harry exactly what Voldemort’s familiar had been like.

“They didn’t like me eating. They kept me in a cupboard under the stairs. My cousin tried to shove me down the stairs, and punch me, and beat me up with his friends.”

“Tried?” asked the woman in the purple hat who had commented before.

“Most of the time, Golden stopped them. He prevented me from falling or he got food for me. And he did a few other things, too. One time, he turned the car my uncle was driving into a donkey.” Harry smiled a little as some of the Wizengamot members laughed in what sounded like surprise. “My uncle was pulling into the driveway too fast and he was going to hit me. But Golden stopped him.”

That made sympathetic looks bloom onto most faces around the room. Only Albus seemed to hear the most important word there. “So they _tried_ to hurt you, Mr. Potter? They didn’t succeed? That is not abuse.”

Amelia turned around and treated him to a cold look. Her tiger surged to his feet and prowled a step forwards, his eyes fixed on Albus and his body coiling as if he would spring.

“That would still be abuse,” said Julian, the man with the bronze monkey. “Comparable to the sort of abuse that people tended to give children in attempting to see if they were Squibs or not. Just because a child doesn’t drown when forced into a lake or bounces when dropped from a window does not make it _not abusive_ , Mr. Dumbledore.”

Albus saw Harry start from the corner of his eye, as if he had realized something. Albus could not waste time pondering what it was. He shook his head. “But we are here to try actions, not intent, as Madam Bones has so carefully reminded me. Is it not _actions_ that matter? And the Dursleys did not manage to lay a hand on Mr. Potter.”

“Having him sleep in a cupboard is still abusive,” Julian said in a clipped voice. His monkey sat up on his shoulder and chattered at Albus, which made Albus think how much better Fawkes’s control was. “Calling him a freak and telling him that his parents were useless drunks who died in an accident they caused is still abuse.”

“It leaves no marks.”

Julian gave him a flatly disbelieving look that Albus found insulting, and turned to face Madam Bones. “I didn’t mean to take over Mr. Potter’s testimony. I hope that you’ll forgive my interruption.”

“You were speaking from the point of view of a man trusted by Mr. Potter with his secrets,” said Amelia. Julian nodded and went back to his seat, but not before he gave another nod to Harry, one that was deep enough it could have been a bow with the angle slightly changed.

Cold shot down Albus’s spine and made Fawkes shift on his perch. Did that mean that Harry was accumulating followers around himself? Ones who might bring back the outdated idea of Lordship for those with golden familiars?

_He is far more dangerous than I thought. I must somehow persuade someone to put Harry in suppression cuffs until his seventeenth birthday._

“Mr. Potter.” Amelia sounded soft and condescending. “Do you want to confirm for us that Mr. Kindle’s words are correct?”

“Yes, they are.” Harry sounded sad, and somehow distracted. “They told me that I was a freak all the time. I didn’t know why, because they didn’t tell me about the wizarding world. I knew Golden must be magic, but not—not how he worked, or that there were other wizards with familiars out there.”

For some reason, Amelia stilled. Then she murmured, “So you came into our world without knowing anything about the hierarchy or the familiars, Mr. Potter?”

“Well, Mr. Hagrid—the Hogwarts gamekeeper—explained a little about it to me when he came to take me to Diagon Alley. And I met Draco Malfoy in the robe shop, and he explained a little more.”

Albus shook his head. Hagrid hadn’t told him that they’d run into the Malfoy boy in Diagon Alley. Then again, it was possible that he wouldn’t have seen him unless he peered hard into the interior of the robe shop.

“But you didn’t know anything about what having a golden familiar meant, or what people might expect of you, when you stepped into Diagon Alley?”

“No. I understand more now, Madam Bones. I’ve been reading and studying at Hogwarts with some of my friends, and some of the professors have been very helpful.”

“You should still have received instruction in such basic matters.” Amelia sounded upset.

Albus cleared his throat. “I wished Harry to grow up away from his fame. The furor would have increased if he’d been raised in the wizarding world, once his familiar manifested. You cannot deny that I have succeeded. He is a modest boy.”

Amelia looked at him once. Then she turned away dismissively, while her tiger continued to regard Albus and Fawkes, a low rumble coming from his throat, too continuous to be called a snarl.

The rest of the questions went as Albus would have expected, with Amelia drawing more details of his “abuse” out of the boy, and questions about where he would go after the trial, and what he had known and not known about before Hogwarts. Albus listened and said nothing more. This was not the right audience, which he should have known. He would wait until Harry was not in the room and there was no way for his innocent face to sway the masses.

But he would persevere. He knew what the others did not: that the Horcrux in Harry’s scar had doubtless influenced his familiar, both in causing it to manifest as a serpent and making it golden. Voldemort’s silver serpent plus the silver familiar that Harry would likely have had without his influence—since both his parents had been born to the silver—had made it gold.

Harry had to die for Voldemort to perish. It was a tragedy almost beyond enduring, but Albus had known others.

And he would not allow someone who had no _true_ claim to the status of a golden familiar to influence the world around him.


	19. Part Nineteen

“It’s all right, Mr. Potter. We can arrange the trials to accommodate you. You don’t have to testify tomorrow if you don’t want to.”

Harry made a little shrug. He suspected they wouldn’t “accommodate” people who didn’t have golden familiars. Hermione or Draco or Neville would have to do what the Ministry told them to do. That meant it wasn’t right. “Thanks, but I can testify tomorrow. It means I won’t have to miss as many classes because it’s a Saturday.”

The woman who was helping him, a nice one named Belinda McKenzie with a tin grasshopper called Sargent, smiled at him. “That’s right, Julian mentioned that you’re so studious you spend a lot of time in the library!”

 _Learning how to help people,_ Harry wanted to say, but then he didn’t. They were just being nice, all these people. It wasn’t that they hated wizards and witches with tin or copper or bronze or silver familiars. They just didn’t treat them the way they should.

“So that you don’t have to keep Flooing to and from the school, Julian’s offered to put you up in his home,” Miss McKenzie continued. Sargent sang gently from her shoulder, as if he wanted to reassure Harry. At least he didn’t seem to be afraid of Golden, Harry thought.

Then his brain caught up with Miss McKenzie’s words, and he shook his head frantically. “He doesn’t have to do that! He really doesn’t!”

“Nonsense, it will be my pleasure,” Julian said briskly, walking in through the office door. Sara leaped down from his shoulder and ran over to nuzzle against Golden. “My wife and my son who’s at home want to meet you. Are you ready to go, Mr. Potter?”

“Er, yes,” Harry said, a little dazed. If anything, he’d thought that because Julian was on the verge of bowing to him half the time, he would let Harry decide where he wanted to spend the night. But Harry supposed Julian was more independent than that.

Which was good, of course. Just—inconvenient, sometimes.

“Come along,” Julian nodded to Miss MeKenzie, who waved back and started filling out some paperwork. “I do hope that you don’t mind some staring, Mr. Potter. My sons are nine and fourteen, and my fourteen-year-old isn’t home, but he still wouldn’t be out of the gaping stage at someone with a golden familiar.”

“One of your sons is fourteen? Do I know him?”

“No, Mr. Potter.” They got into a lift, and Julian sighed and stopped being so formal. “Harry. Philip attends Durmstrang.”

“Oh.” Harry thought about what he knew about Durmstrang, which wasn’t much. Draco had said something at one point about his parents wanting to send him there. And they studied Dark Arts, he knew. And he had heard something about how they only let people with bronze familiars and up attend, which was enough to make Harry think it was stupid.

But Julian wasn’t stupid. Harry looked at him. “Why does Philip have to go there?”

“Because,” Julian murmured, “I did not trust him in a school that Dumbledore runs.”

“Will he come back now that Dumbledore doesn’t run it anymore?”

“I don’t trust the Wizengamot to keep Dumbledore imprisoned permanently. Perhaps if some other things change…”

Julian got quiet as they stepped out of the lift. Harry nodded at him. Then he smiled and waved to the people who gaped at him and Golden. He wanted to be friendly to everyone. He didn’t want them to think of him as some distant Lord, or another Dumbledore.

Julian Flooed them home through a whirling fireplace that Harry thought he hated, even though Golden coiled tightly around him so he didn’t stumble when he came out of the hearth, the way he had when he came from Hogwarts. Harry only barely caught his breath before he found the life being hugged out of him by a tall woman with curly blonde hair.

“I’ve wanted to meet you since Julian first told me about you,” she said, stepping back and beaming at him. Harry saw she had a small copper snake rubbing up against her neck. He looked at the snake with interest; he thought it was a king snake, but he wasn’t sure. The woman saw him looking and smiled. “This is Jasmine. Come and have some dinner, please.”

Over dinner, Harry learned that the woman’s name was Kelly and Jasmine _was_ a king snake, and the boy two years younger than him was called David. David’s familiar was a bronze gazelle called Philberta.

“I half-named her after my brother,” David told Harry proudly, when both Julian and Kelly were eating mashed potatoes. “My brother is the _best_.” He stroked Philberta’s muzzle and stood on his chair to see over the table. “Why does your snake have so many runes on it?”

“Sit _down_ , David!”

“That is rude to ask! And Harry’s snake is a he, not an it.”

David flushed brightly and sank down in his chair. Harry smiled at Julian and Kelly and then at David. “It’s okay. He has a lot of runes on him because we had to learn a lot of defensive magic as kids.” Kelly looked furious, but Harry wasn’t afraid she would be angry at him. He _did_ know the difference between other adults and the Dursleys. “And his name is Golden.”

“Can I pet him?”

Harry glanced at Golden, who’d politely swallowed some potatoes but not anything else. Golden darted his tongue out in his silent equivalent of a shrug. Harry nodded. “Sure.”

David came around the table, Philberta trotting after him with her ears up, and rested his hands on Golden’s side. Golden let his nose drape over David’s arm. “Oh, _wow_. I can feel his magic. That’s brilliant!”

“It’s very strong, isn’t it, David?” Kelly asked. Harry looked at her. There was an odd tone in her voice, but he didn’t know what it was.

“It _is_!”

“My son is magic-sensitive,” Julian said in a soft voice after David and Philberta went back to the other side of the table and started eating. “Sometimes he knows what color a person’s familiar is even without seeing them. It only makes sense with you. A golden familiar _is_ stronger than other people’s.”

“Yes, I know,” Harry said. “But what does it matter? That gives me more strength to change the world with.”

“I am only explaining to you one reason for the respect you will receive. Try not to reject it out of hand.” Julian reached up to hand a small chunk of cheese to Sarah, who was chasing her tail up and down his arm.

“Of course Harry understands that,” said Kelly. “But if he doesn’t want people bowing and scraping to him, then he doesn’t need to endure that, either.” She pushed Julian on the back of the head and then turned and held out her hand to Harry. “Come on, let me show you your room.”

The room was huge and soft, decorated with all sorts of curtains and tapestries, and a large mosaic of a snake on the ceiling that Golden spent a lot of time swaying in approval below. Harry lay down in the bed and wondered if maybe he would have a room just like this when he went to Longbottom Manor this summer.

 _My life sure has changed a lot,_ he thought drowsily as drifted off to sleep and Golden coiled around him. _I like it._

*

Narcissa turned her head to track the progress of the Muggles into the courtroom. She hadn’t been here for the first part of the trial, when the Wizengamot had listened to Albus Dumbledore’s justifications and the Potter boy’s testimony against him. But that didn’t matter.

(It did, however, have concerning implications for her control of both Harry and Draco. Draco hadn’t written to her informing her about the trial in time for her to attend it. Harry hadn’t written at all. She wondered what they were thinking).

The Muggles were bound in chains, and stumbling, and groaning. Narcissa narrowed her eyes. There were no visible marks on their visible flesh, of course not. But she knew, better than anyone else, what kinds of painful spells could be cast that would leave none.

The fat man and the scrawny woman were followed by a boy who was clutching a bag of food in his arms. He didn’t come in chains, and Narcissa wasn’t entirely sure he was on trial. Still, he took a seat off to the sides and looked around with fear ablaze in his eyes. He also never stopped eating.

“These are the Muggles who took care of you, Mr. Potter?”

Narcissa snapped her head around. She couldn’t believe she had been so caught up in staring at _Muggles_ that she had missed the entrance of someone powerful enough to have a golden familiar into the courtroom. Harry’s head was up, and he made eye contact with the Muggles briefly.

“Yes, Madam Bones. Vernon and Petunia Dursley.”

The man—Vernon, apparently—stopped struggling against his chains long enough to bark, “What is this, boy? You get us out of here _right now_! Why are we here? What are they accusing us of?”

“You are being accused of child abuse.” Narcissa knew that she and Amelia Bones would end up on opposite sides of the war soon enough, but she was admirable as she faced the Muggles, her silver tiger standing at her side with his ruff all on end. “Of, among other things, emotional abuse, unfair confinement, and trying to starve and physically hurt Harry James Potter.”

The woman shrieked and clapped a hand over her mouth. The man began to struggle with his chains again. “This is _nonsense_! We treated the boy exactly as he deserved to be treated! And we never hurt him physically! Ask him!”

 _That is hardly a ringing testimonial_ , Narcissa thought, and reached out to soothe Venus as she began to growl beside her.

“Most of the time, Madam Bones, it’s true that they didn’t manage to physically hurt me,” Harry said quietly. “Golden got in their way.” His snake reared up next to him and looked steadily at the Dursleys, in a way that made Narcissa wonder at their lack of reaction until she remembered that Muggles couldn’t see wizards’ familiars. “But there might have some times that I don’t remember.”

“Why did you arrest my parents?” the Muggle boy whined abruptly. “What’s going on? I want to _go home_!”

“In a while, Duddykins,” the woman said, with a nervous smile. Narcissa shook her head. Muggle naming customs were apparently even more atrocious than she had been told.

“Did you make Mr. Potter sleep in a cupboard under the stairs?” Madam Bones moved forwards a step so that the Muggles’ attention would come back to her. The man gave an enormous snort like a seal barking.

“Only for a little while. He was small. He didn’t take up much space, for a freak.” He twisted his head around and sneered at the sounds of outrage that Narcissa could hear rising from the audience. “What? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing with a child you got dumped on you!”

“I can’t imagine myself treating a child like that, no,” Madam Bones said evenly. Narcissa saw her fingers twitch, and the expression on her face seemed to change the Muggle man’s mind, perhaps convincing him for the first time that he was in danger. “So you regularly called him freak? You did not tell him about magic despite knowing about it, since your wife’s sister was a witch?”

“We kept the truth from him for the boy’s own good,” the woman snapped then. “I wasn’t going to have him going off and learning magic and doing all those tricks around _decent_ people. My sister used to come home with her pockets full of frogs! You can’t tell me _that’s_ normal or natural!”

The trial went downhill from there. Narcissa watched the Muggles sometimes, but more often Harry, who sat there with a pale face and didn’t look at his relatives half the time, but his own hand stroking his golden snake’s neck.

_None of them know how to handle him. They don’t realize that this punishment of his relatives, although necessary, affronts his sense of compassion._

Narcissa smiled. That was all right. She and Venus had plenty of compassion to offer, and they would catch up with Harry after the trial.


	20. Part Twenty

Harry sat there and found himself wishing that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon _weren’t_ there. He was angry at them a lot of the time, yes, but seeing them surrounded by wizards and dangerous familiars and not even able to see the familiars hurt something deep inside.

People shouldn’t be surrounded that way. They shouldn’t be in danger that way.

Golden nudged him nearly hard enough to slide him off the chair. Harry looked back at him and found Golden arched so that one of the runes on his back shone in the light.

Harry nodded slightly. Yes, he did remember all the times they had tried to hurt him, and that Golden had had to use magic to save him. He wasn’t going to tell the court that nothing had ever happened and they should let his relatives go. But he did think that he had to think about it.

And it hurt.

Golden rubbed a smooth scale against his leg. Harry let his hand rest there and looked up as Madam Bones moved in front of him again.

“Your relatives are all but rushing to confess their mistreatment of you, Mr. Potter,” she said, with a satisfied smile. Behind her, Phantom was watching Uncle Vernon with his teeth bared. Harry wondered if Uncle Vernon would actually behave differently if he could see him, though. “We would like to examine the runes on your familiar, if you please.”

Harry tensed up. He knew they could probably tell a lot more from the runes than he could, since he didn’t know the exact shapes or how they connected to the magic Golden could do yet.

But Madam Bones only waited, and repeated, “The runes, if you please,” in a soft tone that said she was sorry but he wasn’t getting out of it.

Golden leaned heavily on the chair leg and Harry’s hip for a second, then slithered over to her. Madam Bones waved her wand, and silver sparks shot into the crowd. A second later, the two witches they had touched came down and bent over the runes. They both had copper familiars, one a fox and one a hound. They sniffed all of Golden’s runes, while he held still and looked tolerant.

“Why are they bent over nothing like that?” Harry heard Dudley whine, and his mother hush him.

“Well?” Madam Bones finally asked. “What have you found?”

“The runes are exclusively defensive magic,” said one of the witches, looking up. The fox crawled into her lap and licked her chin. She looked down at him, then back up at Madam Bones and nodded. “Meant to protect a child from physical harm, from getting too lonely, from having bad dreams—”

“And from starving,” added the other witch, throwing her long braid back over her shoulder. Her hound stood up and growled at the Dursleys. “Mr. Potter doesn’t show that many signs of malnutrition, but his familiar has runes dedicated specifically to summoning food. And since familiars can feed on magic, he wouldn’t need that much.”

Harry flushed bright red. It felt like _everyone_ in the audience was looking at him. Even if they were sympathetic, it was still a little too much. He didn’t want the attention. He was glad when Golden crawled back to him and some of the people started looking at him instead.

“Starved? We never starved the boy,” Uncle Vernon bleated. “And if he has bad dreams, so what? That’s not _our_ fault!”

“ _Silence_!” Madam Bones whipped around so fast that her pointed hat almost flew off. Phantom dropped to his belly and moved a step nearer. His growl was soft and far-away; Harry had to concentrate to hear it. “The boy’s familiar has magic that had to defend him from such dangers. If Mr. Potter had an occasional nightmare typical of children, his snake would not bear those runes!”

“Snake? Runes? You’re all _mad_!” Uncle Vernon yanked at the chains around his arms again. “Get these ruddy things off, and let us go!”

“No, I don’t think so,” Madam Bones said, and she was terrifying cold in a way that would have made Harry want to hide if Golden wasn’t right beside him. And if he hadn’t reminded himself that people who wanted to change the world couldn’t really hide. He took a deep breath and threw his shoulders back as far as he could. “What you have failed to understand is that each wizard has a familiar who accompanies him or her—an animal invisible to Muggles, indeed undetectable in any way. But those familiars provide protection to their companions when they are in danger. And Mr. Potter’s familiar has many signs that he has been in danger in the past.”

“The boy is clumsy,” Aunt Petunia said in a shrill voice. Harry couldn’t see her because of the way Madam Bones was standing, but he knew she would have her arms folded and her best smile on her face. That was the one that always let her get away with lying to other people. “And he starts fights. Not like our Dudders, who just wants to be left alone!”

“You are lying,” Madam Bones said. She had her usual calm tone back, but Phantom had moved so that he was watching both Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. “The runes confirm it. No child who was clumsy or liked to be in fights would need _that_ much protection. And what of the nightmares? The loneliness, when he lived in a house with four other people in it? The near-starvation?”

Harry swallowed. Golden was right there beside him, but at the same time he felt terrified and _gone_.

“We can’t help it if you freaks believe the lies he tells,” Aunt Petunia said.

“We’re not going to get anything else out of them, Amelia,” someone called from the Wizengamot. Harry looked up, but he didn’t know the tall wizard who was speaking. He had a bronze lioness standing beside him, who looked as if she wanted to join Phantom in growling at the Dursleys. “Punish them, and let’s push this forwards.”

“I suppose you’re right, Rufus,” Madam Bones muttered. She faced Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia again. “For your crimes in mistreating a child so young, for such a lengthy period of time, you will spend five years Transfigured into animals and living in a house that will treat you better than you treated him. Human Transfiguration doesn’t last long, but we will renew the spells when they fade.”

“ _What_?” gasped Aunt Petunia. She looked like she was going to be sick.

“You can’t do this to us!” yelled Uncle Vernon. Harry thought that Dudley was yelling the same thing, except he was saying, “You can’t do this to Mummy and Daddy!”

Madam Bones gave them a faint smile. “Why not? The punishment would be harder, but you didn’t actually manage to hurt Mr. Potter as much as you would have if he had a less powerful familiar. And a recent change in the laws says that putting Muggles in Azkaban doesn’t help much. They all die before they finish their sentences. This way, you have a chance.”

Aunt Petunia began to cry. Uncle Vernon looked as if he didn’t even know what to do; he was just turning red with his jaw hanging open. Dudley started to cry at the same time.

“As for your son,” Madam Bones said, “I understand that you have a sister, Mr. Dursley. He will be remanded to your custody. If you behave well enough in the interim, you may be granted short visits with him when you are back in human form.”

Dudley just wailed louder. Harry grunted. He’d always hated the way Dudley chased him with his friends and tried to beat him up, but—just now he was realizing he didn’t hate _Dudley_. How could he, when he didn’t even hate Voldemort?

Madam Bones started to say something else, but Harry had to speak up. “Madam Bones, can _I_ appeal the sentence?”

Madam Bones turned around to stare at him, and so did everyone else in the room. Harry thought he could see Mrs. Malfoy there, too. He winced, but he stood up straight and repeated, “Can I appeal it?”

“The sentence is to give them a chance, Mr. Potter,” said Madam Bones, when she could speak. “Azkaban would kill them, and there _are_ wizards who would kill them out of hand for what they did to our Savior. By living as animals, they will have a chance to learn to see different points-of-view, and learn kindness. It’s to improve them as human beings as much as to punish them.”

Harry shook his head. “They don’t think that. Dudley doesn’t think that. I mean—I don’t want to take Dudley’s parents away from him. I don’t want to do to him what Voldemort did to me.”

His voice was small, but Madam Bones still flinched. Then she said carefully, “He will not be orphaned. He will visit them, and he will receive them back at the end of the five years.”

“But that’s still too much,” Harry said, and sneaked a look at Dudley. He was sobbing with his mouth open, but someone must have cast a Silencing Charm on him, since Harry couldn’t hear anything. “I don’t want to pretend this isn’t important. I don’t want to pretend it doesn’t cost anything.”

Madam Bones spent a moment studying him, and then exchanged glances with several of the Wizengamot members in the crowd. Then she said, “Your compassion does you credit, Harry. But we cannot simply let them go. Then they would learn nothing. And what would happen if another magical child was born into their family someday? They would mistreat him or her the same way they did you.”

Harry winced. He hated the thought of that happening, but he knew it might. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia just hated magic too much. And Dudley might grow up hating it the same way. If he had magical kids…

Finally, he said, “What about two years? Could they just be animals for two years? And is there a spell you could cast so that they could see familiars? So they wouldn’t be hurt by them?”

Madam Bones turned to the crowd again. The man with the bronze lioness, Rufus, who was studying Harry, nodded. “There is a spell that will work on mundane animals, although not on Muggles. They would be able to see familiars as long as they wore animal form.”

“Then can you do it, please?” Harry whispered. He couldn’t look at his family. He knew he would never have to see them again after today or even think of them as his family, but right now, he wanted to. “Can you just do it so that they won’t have to spend as long away from each other, and they won’t be as frightened?”

“We don’t need you to _defend_ us, boy!” Aunt Petunia shrieked. “We need you to _stop_ this!”

Harry didn’t look at them. They really were horrible people. But that didn’t mean he had to be horrible in return. He stood there and looked up fearlessly into Madam Bones’s face, and maybe because he really _was_ fearless, her eyes softened.

“What does the Wizengamot say?” she asked, and turned around again, her arms spread out as if she was conducting an orchestra. “Will you agree to reduce the sentence from five years to two?”

There was a lot of disagreement and arguing that Harry didn’t pay much attention to. He kept looking at the Dursleys. It felt strange to know that no matter what happened today, he would probably never see them again.

Dudley noticed him watching, and scowled. Someone had taken the Silencing Charm off. “What are _you_ looking at, freak?”

“Things that are lost,” Harry mumbled. Golden wrapped around his ankle in approval of that answer.

In the end, the Wizengamot agreed that they could reduce the sentence. Harry closed his eyes. Maybe he was the only one who would be comfortable with that, because Dudley would probably forget that he was the one who had asked for it in the first place, but at least it was happening.

“Come along, Harry.”

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were shouting. Harry didn’t listen to them. He followed the arm pulling him out of the room. For some reason, maybe because Golden didn’t object, he thought it was Julian. But then he looked up and blinked, and realized it was Mrs. Malfoy, with her silver snow leopard pacing beside her.

Mrs. Malfoy gave him a smile that was far warmer than Aunt Petunia’s had ever been. “I think we should talk, Harry. Do come and take tea with me.”

And Harry had to follow.


	21. Part Twenty-One

Narcissa escorted Harry into one of the small alcoves in the Ministry that sold food, one you would never realize was there unless you had visited the Ministry before. This particular woman, her tin slow-worm looking over her shoulder, widened her eyes at the sight of Golden and gave Narcissa free clotted cream and a scone for Harry. Narcissa still insisted on paying for her own food and tea. She didn’t want Harry getting a bad impression of her.

“Now, let’s sit,” she said, and ushered them over to a small room that Lucius had once been interrogated in. Narcissa locked the door behind them and set out the refreshments on a small table. “Mr. Potter? Are you all right?”

Harry blinked hard and looked up at her. Golden had never stopped watching her. “I—I’m fine, Mrs. Malfoy.”

“Narcissa, dear,” she said softly, and pushed the scone and cream towards him. Golden patted Harry on the lap with his tail, and that seemed to be Harry’s cue to eat. He gave her a timid smile and swallowed a few bites.

When he had, Narcissa folded her wrists in her lap and murmured, “Now, my dear. I understand the trial must have shocked you.”

“I think it’s cruel.”

“The trial process itself?”

Harry shook his head vehemently. “Turning Muggles into animals and leaving them that way for years, even if they get to be human sometimes. Will they even be able to _think_ like humans when they get turned back permanently?”

Narcissa paused in surprise, but then smiled. Of course she should not be surprised that someone in his first year at Hogwarts, and raised among Muggles before that, would not know Transfiguration theory. “Human Transfiguration is not the same thing as self-transformation, Harry. The wizards who can turn themselves into animals are called Animagi. They do stand a chance of losing their minds to their animal selves if they spend too much time in that form, yes. But your aunt and uncle will still be human, only with differently-shaped bodies.”

“Oh.” Harry swallowed. Then he asked, “And if they went to Azkaban, they would stand a chance of losing every happy thought they’ve ever had to the Dementors?”

“Yes. Muggles are not as strong as wizards, dear one. They are also more likely to be eaten. That is why the laws are on the books now to prevent them from going to Azkaban.” Privately, Narcissa approved of those laws, but only because the Muggles who had been punished in the past for crimes affecting wizards had not suffered long enough.

“Then I suppose this is better. I’m glad I got them to agree to two years, though. Five was too long.”

“What happens if they come out still hating magic, though, Harry? Do you think five years might have been better in case they come into contact with any magical children again?”

Harry made a quick motion with his hand, but turned it into scooping up the scone, so Narcissa was not sure what he had meant to do. She sat patiently, and Harry finally muttered, “I don’t think five or two years makes a difference, with hatred as deep as theirs.”

“Then perhaps they will be up in front of the Wizengamot one day in the future, getting punished. We can hope not, though.” Narcissa let a beat of three moments go by, then added, “I would have been in favor of ten years myself.”

“ _Why_?”

His eyes all but burned with betrayal, but considering that was the effect Narcissa had been leaning towards, she smiled. “Because they hurt _you_ , Harry. Have you had a chance to learn yet why people with golden familiars are so treasured in our world?”

Harry tilted his head to look at her. “I’ve had someone call me Lord. And they said it used to be more common.”

 _Is that person a rival I should beware of?_ But Narcissa doubted Harry would answer the question if she asked, or possibly understand it. She buried it to ask later, and said, “Well, my family has called another Lord who was less worthy than you. Perhaps we can reach that level of respect later on.”

“Why was he less worthy?”

Narcissa paused. “Perhaps you were not aware that the Dark Lord had a silver familiar?”

“Yeah, I know.” Harry stood up and leaned across the table. Narcissa blinked. This had not factored into her plans for the afternoon. “I think it’s _disgusting_ that people’s worth is judged based on the colors of their familiars. Or whether they even have familiars. Muggles don’t, but they shouldn’t just be—be hurt and thrown into prison and turned into animals!”

Venus rumbled warningly next to Narcissa. She had respect for Golden, Narcissa knew, but she would pounce if the boy was threatening her witch. Narcissa touched the back of Venus’s neck and held until her snow leopard became calm. Then she sighed and shook her head. “Alas, people will always judge each other, and what can you do? Only try to establish objective standards. The presence of familiars of a certain color is one such.”

“Why?”

“Because it tells us how much power a wizard has, and something about the content of their soul. Familiars are often argued to be an extension of a wizard’s magic, a wizard’s soul, or both, Harry, did you know?” Narcissa gave him a small, comforting smile, and Harry watched her. “You would trust someone with powerful magic and a spotless soul better than you would someone weak with a tarnished one, true?”

“You’re saying that everyone who has a tin or a copper familiar has a tarnished soul?”

Narcissa did not think she had heard the tone in Harry’s voice before, in the voice of anyone, but she pushed ahead. “Not precisely. But they have less power, and less _quality_ , Harry. Less room to grow, to achieve greatness. One must spend one’s power—what you might call the coin of the soul—sparingly. You have gold to spend. I have silver. Someone who has tin or copper, well. Would you care to spend much time with them?”

“One of my friends at Hogwarts has a copper familiar. One has a tin familiar. Lots of them have bronze.”

Narcissa sighed. “My dear, I am not saying you should _never_ associate with someone who has a different color. That would be rather difficult in your case, when the only other person born to the gold is your enemy!” She smiled. Harry did not echo it. Venus’s tail flicked. Narcissa reminded herself of the boy’s ignorance. “If you had grown up in our society, you would understand this already. You would have had people around you who could educate you in the hierarchy and what notice is due someone with a golden familiar.”

“I think I understand enough.”

“But I would like to offer you lessons,” Narcissa replied quickly. The boy had not approached her lately about ingredients for the ritual that would free a possessed soul, which meant he had probably found some other supplier. Narcissa wanted to maintain a connection to him other than the tenuous one Draco provided. “Lessons in courtesy, manners, etiquette.”

Harry gave her a hard, considering look. “The kinds of lessons that I would have learned if I had been raised in the wizarding world?”

“Yes, my dear. If nothing else, they will make you look less crass when approaching those who inhabit the upper regions of the hierarchy. Your natural peers, or as close to peers as you can come.”

Harry smiled. His eyes were still hard. “It would be useful to understand the way you think, Mrs. Malfoy.”

“Narcissa, dear. And I am glad that you’ve agreed to the lessons. When do you want to have them?”

*

Harry walked along the corridor outside the Hufflepuff common room with Golden slithering beside him. He knew he should probably go back into the common room and do some of his homework. It hadn’t got done this weekend while he was attending his relatives’ trial.

But he was so upset that it was hard to breathe. And even when Golden leaned against him and Harry felt the warmth, he didn’t feel much better.

Why did other people think he should be _happy_ when something terrible happened? Yeah, he didn’t like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia very much. He _was_ happy that he never had to live with them again. But they still shouldn’t be turned into dogs or cats or whatever they were going to be turned into for years! Dudley shouldn’t have to live with Aunt Marge! It wasn’t going to _help_.

And people shouldn’t be going around thinking that he was better than they were. Or that they were better than other people. Narcissa had given Harry his first etiquette lesson that day, by Harry’s request, before he came back to Hogwarts. She had explained, carefully and gently, that she was better than Muggleborns because they didn’t grow up in the wizarding world and so they never learned how to properly bond with their familiars as children. By the time they came to Hogwarts at eleven, it was too late.

Harry had said, “But _I_ grew up in the Muggle world, and I didn’t know about any other wizards or familiars until I was eleven.”

“That’s different, dear,” Narcissa had said, which was something Harry was getting tired of hearing. “You have a gold. Of course you would forge a more instinctive connection with him no matter what.”

Harry could feel his eyes burning, and he stopped and rubbed angrily at them. He was _not_ better than Hermione. She found all sorts of important books in the library, and told him all sorts of things about the ritual that would cure Professor Quirrell that Harry hadn’t even _thought_ of looking up.

And he wasn’t better than Draco! Draco had a silver familiar, and he’d been Harry’s friend almost from the first second they met. And he could be kind to Muggleborns like Hermione, and he was a lot younger than Narcissa, so Harry didn’t see what was stopping _her_.

And he wasn’t better than Cormac, who had a copper familiar and had looked up people in the Ministry for Harry so that Harry could get away from the Dursleys in the first place. And he wasn’t better than Julian, who had done so much for him. And he wasn’t better than Snape, who had promised to help him and who had stood up to Dumbledore for him.

“I just don’t understand,” he whispered to Golden. “Why do they _think_ that? How _can_ they think that? Do they just ignore everything and everybody?”

Golden leaned hard against him. Harry hugged his snake behind the head. Then he said, “Okay. Okay. So everyone thinks I’m going to change the world. And I’m going to do it, just not the way _they_ think. So we free Professor Quirrell first. But then what do you think we ought to do? What’s the next step?”

Golden looked up at him, and Harry saw an image of Narcissa sitting at the table behind the scones the way she had earlier that day. She was stroking Venus. Harry frowned at the memory, because he didn’t know what was different about it now than living through it, but Golden focused on Venus, and the way she looked at Golden with narrowed eyes.

Harry blinked. “You think we ought to talk to the familiars? The way they’ll all talk to you? I mean, we don’t want to make them obey us.”

Golden thumped his tail against the floor for emphasis, and pictured Venus again. She was growling at Harry, and then looking at Golden with narrowed eyes again.

“Oh. We can’t _make_ them listen. Some of them are even suspicious of us. But they’ve got a different perspective than the wizards, right? And they’ll be more open-minded because you’re gold, but they’re not going to bow down to you because you’re gold?”

Golden climbed his body and twined around his neck and chest, looking into his eyes. His own were bright green and shining, happy and proud. He delicately licked Harry’s ear and then slithered down his body and to the floor again.

“All right.” Harry sighed and stroked one of the runes that shone on Golden’s back. He ended up looking away from it, because even that reminded him of the Dursleys and what he had endured there—

What they were going to endure.

“So we start with the familiars. What do you think will be the easiest? Our friends’? Should we talk to Draco, since Kali can fly and go other places? Or not, because you think he’d have to tell his mother and father what he’s doing?”

Golden slapped his tail on the floor again, and pointed his nose back towards the door of the Hufflepuff common room. Harry sighed. “Okay, I’ll sleep tonight, and we need to work on the possession ritual first anyway. But we can plan in the morning, right? And maybe start talking to familiars to see if they want to help us?”

Golden gave him a look so full of love that Harry went floating back to bed and to sleep. Neville was already asleep with Trevor on his chest in the bed next to his. Harry brushed his teeth and went to the loo very quietly so he wouldn’t wake them up.

Then he lay down with Golden on _his_ chest and dreamed of a hopeful future.


	22. Part Twenty-Two

“What do you want to do, though?” Draco was frowning as though he thought what Harry had asked for was hard to understand.

Harry stroked Golden’s neck and looked thoughtfully at Kali. She balanced lightly on Draco’s shoulder, as always, although she leaned forwards to get a better look at him and Golden. “ _Can you talk to her_?” he asked Golden in Parseltongue.

Draco drew in his breath sharply, as he tended to do when he heard the snake language, but didn’t back away. Golden bobbed his head and leaned up, putting most of his upper body in Harry’s lap. He hissed at Kali in a slightly accented version of Parseltongue, or at least that was what it sounded like to Harry. “ _Can you understand me? Speaking with familiars in the past has sometimes been difficult for me._ ”

Kali hissed back, although her response was impossible for Harry to grasp, the “accent” that Golden had covering every word. Golden spoke shortly and Kali answered him, again. She kept giving Harry suspicious glances as she did. Harry had to grin.

Golden slumped back in Harry’s lap finally and said, “ _She says that she understands us, but she thinks it is a waste of time. Silver familiars are more powerful, and golden familiars are most powerful of all, and that is the way it stays._ ”

“ _So she won’t help us?”_

“ _No, she will. She would do anything I ask. But she thinks it’s going to be useless, and she needs to make her opinion known._ ”

Kali hissed at them once more and then took wing and soared out of the library. Harry leaned back so he could watch her go, and he thought she was flying towards Ravenclaw Tower, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe she was going to talk with Hermione and Regina.

“Familiars can speak to each other,” Harry said, returning his attention to Draco. “And Golden—he doesn’t _say_ much, but he approved when I started thinking that maybe they don’t believe in the hierarchy in the same way humans do.” He kept the fact that Kali apparently did to himself. Draco didn’t need to know his dragon was a prejudiced little thing.

“What’s going to happen if you can gather enough of them together?”

“A revolution.” Harry thought he had been honest with his friends about that before, but Draco flinched.

“What would happen after that, though? I mean, would I still have people respecting me? My parents always told me that of course anyone would respect a Malfoy, but they also say that only people with silver and gold familiars really matter, so—I don’t know.”

“You’ll matter to _me_ ,” Harry said fiercely, reaching across the table to grab Draco’s hand. “I can’t tell about other people. So much of what they do doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. But maybe that’s just because I didn’t grow up in the wizarding world.”

“So you don’t know for sure what would happen,” Draco said sharply.

“No. That’s what revolutions mean. But I know that people who have copper and tin familiars would have more respect. And maybe even people with bronze familiars.” Harry thought people with bronzes were sort of in the middle. Julian seemed happy enough, and his family, and Ron. But then, he hadn’t met all that many people since he came into the wizarding world, so he didn’t know.

And people like Narcissa Malfoy would despise them anyway.

Draco, oddly, calmed down after that. “Okay. As long as you’re admitting that you don’t know what would happen.”

“Not to people with silvers,” Harry admitted. “Not even to me and Golden. But I know that I don’t want people bowing to me and calling me a lord because of an accident that I happened to be born with.”

“Golden familiars _are_ more powerful, though. They just are.”

“Does that make Dumbledore right, then? Should he be able to get away with anything because he’s powerful?”

Draco wriggled in place and glared at him. “You know the answer to that. Of course I don’t think Dumbledore should be able to get away with anything he likes.”

“Then we need to think about the rest of it, too. Whether people with tin and copper familiars belong at the bottom of the hierarchy, and whether there should be a bottom _anyway_. Whether people with silver familiars should be strutting around just because they’re at the top of the hierarchy most of the time. Whether people with golden familiars need to be called Lord and obeyed.”

“But if you—it’s what you did on the train. And since then. You’re using the fact that you have a golden familiar and we respect you to make us do what you want, and think about the things you’re saying.”

Harry grinned, while Golden swayed back and forth for a second next to him. “Yeah, I am.”

“But that’s—you can’t do that.” Draco sounded more perplexed than anything else, like he was slowly talking himself through it. “I mean, you can’t use people’s reverence for people with golden familiars against them. That’s just wrong.”

“I think it might be Slytherin,” Harry admitted. “Maybe I belong in more than one House. But I don’t care. As long as it works, that’s what I want to happen.”

Draco continued to glare at him as if this was some kind of personal betrayal. Then he sighed and said, “All right, so you already know that I’m going to follow you and do what you want. So even if it’s sneaky, I’ll help. And if Kali can’t convince other familiars to come talk to us, then we’ll find some other way.”

Harry frowned. “I never said that you had to be a loyal follower like that.”

“Well, then you can bugger off,” Draco said, and grinned at him. “Because I’m choosing to follow you like people with silver familiars follow people with golden ones, so we can stop the following someday in the future. I’m just doing what you’re doing.”

Harry scowled uncertainly at him.

“Get used to it,” Draco said happily.

*

“You will be sorry for what you’ve done when the Dark Lord returns, Severus.”

Severus surveyed Quirinus impassively. Or the man who used to be Quirinus. At this point, Severus had no way of telling how much of the man still remained. He could be lying about anything, and the fervent shine in his eyes could be the Dark Lord or it could be Quirinus desperately striving to escape his grasp. He couldn’t even see the Dark Lord’s familiar in the body of Quirinus’s the way Harry could.

It didn’t matter. He was here to gather information, and he didn’t need to do that by asking Quirinus’s permission.

Severus drew the vial from his robes slowly, having to admit to himself that he enjoyed the way Quirinus’s eyes fastened on it and then widened. Quirinus shook his head slowly, as though to clear some fluff from his brain, and then leaned forwards and fastened his gaze on Severus over the edge of the ward that contained him.

“You would not dare use that on me.”

“Why not?” Severus’s voice was gentler than he had known it would be. He wondered, for a moment, whether his oath to Harry was influencing him.

“Because—it would be illegal.”

Severus gave Quirinus a soft smile, for the first time grateful that the spirit of the Dark Lord inhabited his body. And it must be so. Quirinus had never been a Death Eater and would not have recognized the potion otherwise. Severus hadn’t brewed it since the war. “Only if someone could look for this potion because they knew it existed. The Death Eaters who remain in the Ministry’s service would not be so foolish.” Around his neck, Shadowstriker uttered a little hiss, approving of his logic.

“There will be—they’ll check—I’ll tell them!”

“I very strongly doubt that the Ministry will appear at all to listen to either Quirinus Quirrell _or_ Lord Voldemort,” Severus said, and ignored the way the Dark Mark on his arm burned. He had to get used to saying the name if he was going to be around Harry. Harry would certainly expect him to. “Now, do hold still, and we can take this potion the pleasant way.”

Of course Quirinus flung himself away from the edge of the circular blue ward to the chair in the center, his rabbit cowering beside him. Severus sneered one more time, and slashed down with his wand, aiming at the vial.

The potion disappeared, and reappeared inside Quirinus’s throat, at the base of the esophagus. He had to swallow or choke, and instinct won out. He sagged back in his chair, staring at Severus with hatred.

Severus smiled back, slow and nasty. An intriguing property of the potion was that it could cross any ward. He had invested it with that particular quality at the Dark Lord’s behest.

It thrilled him, the part of him that had become a Death Eater, to know that he was now using that potion against the man who had wanted it to exist.

Quirinus started to feel the effects a few minutes later. His eyes drooped shut, and his familiar dropped into sleep like a stone at the same time. Severus nodded. That was the other main way in which this potion differed from Veritaserum. Sometimes a familiar could help a powerful wizard resist Veritaserum, simply because it had not also swallowed the potion. This took the familiar out of the equation.

Quirinus opened glazed eyes. It was his subconscious that answered when Severus posed the question, “How did you become possessed by the spirit of the Dark Lord?”

“I was traveling in Albania,” whispered Quirinus. “I wanted to seek out the remains of Lord Voldemort. I was foolish then. Young. I thought I would become a renowned wizard if I fought him. I found him, and fought him. I lost. He entered my body.”

Severus grimaced. He supposed he should have known that Quirinus had sought out the Dark Lord deliberately. It was otherwise far too much of a coincidence that the Dark Lord had managed to possess a Hogwarts teacher. “Explain to me how Lord Voldemort survived being disembodied.”

“He—”

Quirinus abruptly spasmed. His mouth was open, but he was making no sound. His hands flew up and then down again, hitting the sides of the chair rapidly. His feet were drumming on the floor. There was a clenching and rippling in the muscles of his stomach as if he was about to throw up.

Severus narrowed his eyes. It was true that he’d never tried the Sleeping Truth Potion on someone possessed. Perhaps it was a mistake.

But finally Quirinus took a deep breath, and whispered, “He has objects that tie him to this world. That keep his soul from moving on. His familiar is part of it.”

Severus considered that. Familiars were widely believed to be an extension of a wizard’s soul, so perhaps Voldemort had used soul-magic. That would explain why his familiar had been disembodied at the same time and come with him, although not _how_ he had done it.

But he doubted he would be able to get much more than that out of Quirinus. Voldemort would fight to protect the knowledge. And his potion could only access Quirinus’s mind and what _he_ knew to be true, not the possessing spirit, and only put Alanna to sleep, not Nagini, Voldemort’s silver serpent. It was entirely possible that Voldemort had never told Quirinus the mechanics of his survival.

Severus asked a few more questions, to learn exactly where in Albania the Dark Lord had been and how long he had possessed Quirinus, and then moved on to what his plan had been in Hogwarts. “What was he looking for here?”

“The Philosopher’s Stone. Albus was hiding it here, we heard. He thought it could return him to his body.”

Severus widened his eyes. The thought shook him enough that Shadowstriker hissed soothingly and touched his narrow head to Severus’s cheek. Severus petted him. while staring at the slumped Quirinus in deep thought.

Albus had been hiding the Stone _here_? Of course it was possible, since he was a close friend of Flamel and might have asked him to lend it out. But to put it in a school full of children, and lure Voldemort here on purpose, and make it so that he might have been able to take it—

Why?

Severus asked that question, but received only the empty, “I do not know,” which he thought was true.

Other questions about the process that Voldemort had intended to use the Stone for or how long Quirinus thought he could survive received the same answer. Severus finally sighed and cast the spell that would send Quirinus and Alanna into true sleep, then walked away from the warded circle. There were questions that they would have no answer to unless they managed to trap the Dark Lord’s spirit as it fled Quirinus’s body when the ritual was complete and question it later.

And Severus was reluctant to suggest any modifications to the possession ritual, which would be complex enough as it was. Perhaps best to let the spirit go and strengthen their defenses in the future.

And begin doing research on rituals, spells, and objects that would corrupt a familiar.


	23. Part Twenty-Three

“I need you to explain some things about familiars to me,” Hermione said, sitting down in front of Ron with parchment and a quill.

Ron eyed them uneasily. Not that he didn’t like Hermione, and she had given him some useful tips for essays and where to look in the books for homework, but she was acting like she was going to use him as a study subject. He wasn’t sure about that.

“So,” Hermione said earnestly, leaning forwards, “I know that Regina is an ermine, and yet she doesn’t try to eat the little birds and rodents that some people here have as familiars. Why not?” Regina chittered on her shoulder as if she was angry about the question.

Arctos nudged Ron in the side with his nose, as he often did, to remind Ron he was there. Ron scratched behind his ears and tried to think of a sensible answer to that question. “Blimey, Hermione. Why _would_ they? Familiars are all intelligent.”

“But they’re also animals, with all their natural instincts. Why _wouldn’t_ they?”

Ron blinked at her. “You think regular animals walk around with wizards and can’t be seen by Muggles and glow different metallic colors? I mean, you might get _brown_ wolves in nature, but you aren’t going to get bronze ones like Arctos.” He caressed his wolf’s side, and Arctos huffed in pleasure and leaned against him.

“And you don’t get golden snakes or silver ermines, either, I know.” Hermione brushed a curl of hair out of her eyes. “But it just seems like familiars would find it hard to resist chasing down other familiars.”

“They don’t.”

“ _I know_. I just want to know _why_.”

Ron sighed. He wanted to tell Hermione to go ask Draco or something, who would know more about the magical lore surrounding familiars, but he supposed there was a reason Hermione had asked him instead. Draco still sometimes had a sneer in the back of his voice when he talked about someone who hadn’t grown up in the wizarding world.

Except Harry. But Harry was kind of the exception to everything.

Ron could at least tell her some things, though, even if he couldn’t tell her all the technical explanations she was probably dying to hear. “Familiars are an extension of a wizard’s soul,” he said, and watched as Hermione began to scribble the words down. “They wouldn’t hunt and hurt someone else’s familiar any more than normal people would kill another person. They can be corrupted, I think,” he added, a little less certain. Sometimes he had overheard his parents talking about battles when You-Know-Who was around where Death Eaters’ familiars attacked other people. But it was hard to tell when that was corruption and when it was just them defending their wizards, which any familiar had a right to do.

“What does corruption mean?”

“You corrupt your soul, and that corrupts the familiar.”

Hermione started to write, then stopped and gave him an exasperated glance. “But what does that _mean?_ How do you corrupt your soul or corrupt your familiar?”

Ron laughed. It was a weird sound, and he stopped making it when Hermione’s look sharpened. “You think they write descriptions of that process down, Hermione? Bloody hell. Of course they don’t.” Arctos’s tail thumped, and Ron bent over him, making his fur almost stand on end with how hard he was rubbing it. “There might be spells. Rituals. Something. But I don’t know what they are.”

Hermione frowned and tapped her wand against the table, making Ron wince. But other than a few sparks shooting out, nothing happened. Ron was relieved. Madam Pomfrey would never forgive them if they damaged the books while supposedly just sitting in the library. “Is that why they call people Dark wizards?”

“Some of them,” Ron said cautiously. The only Dark wizards that he knew for _sure_ were You-Know-Who and the Death Eaters who had fought on his side. And then, he had to admit that he wasn’t sure about all of them, anymore, since Draco was a Malfoy and they’d fought next to You-Know-Who, but Draco was coming over to _their_ side. “Not all of them, I don’t think? You can be a Dark wizard and not have a corrupted familiar. But I think the worst ones have corrupted familiars.”

“Huh,” Hermione said, and stood and disappeared into the shelves of books without a word. Regina gave him an irritated look and bounded after her, although Ron didn’t see how that was _his_ fault. Arctos whuffed a little.

“Yeah, you and me both,” Ron said, and then went to play tag with his wolf, since his Charms essay wasn’t due until Monday.

*

Albus closed his eyes, meditating carefully. It had been a long, long time since he’d used this particular talent, and it was harder with his magic and Fawkes’s held down by the suppression cuffs. But he had mastered it as a bored, lonely child watching his younger sister, and boredom and loneliness were certainly conditions of the cell in which he now found himself.

When it seemed as if the whole of his body was thrumming like a tuning fork, then he took a _step_ to the side.

Well, his spirit did. It had pulled free of his body. Albus opened his eyes and found his consciousness fading through the wall of the cell as if he were a ghost. He smiled slightly in triumph, or at least vibrated with pleasure and goodwill, as he drifted softly up through the Ministry, from the holding cells to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He would have to travel for some time before he found Madam Bones’s office, but he had plenty of time.

And in this form, no one would be able to see him. Ghosts were only visible because their bodies were utterly gone, and that drove the soul to create an ethereal facsimile. Albus was traveling astrally. The only people who would be able to sense him were other astral travelers.

Golden familiars could, as well, but being as it was a schoolday, Albus didn’t think he would encounter Harry here.

He drifted around several corners, listened to the talk of the people walking obliviously through him, and peered through the open doors he encountered. So far, no one was being so considerate as to be escorting a naïve visitor to the Ministry to Madam Bones’s office. Albus resigned himself to taking his time.

Before he found the office, he heard his name. Albus turned and focused, and for a moment the world narrowed around him as if he were rushing down a thin white tunnel. Then it stabilized again, and he was hovering over the shoulder of a tired-looking woman dressed in Auror robes.

“But I don’t understand why you think this is such a big change,” said the man opposite her. He had familiar features, brown eyes and thick black hair, although Albus had to squint at his bronze hyacinth macaw before he recognized him. Of course, Lewis Alfonzo, friend to poor Marlene McKinnon who had fought in the Order with Albus and died in the war.

“Because for years, our wizarding world has had an unacknowledged Lord,” the Auror said. Her shoulders slumped. Even the copper mare leaning on her shoulder stood with head drooping. “Maybe Dumbledore never wanted to rule, but he made his power felt anyway. Everyone had to be careful around him.”

“Not _that_ careful.”

The Auror ignored poor Lewis. “Now there’s another choice, someone else to swear allegiance to. If you think that doesn’t change things, then you’re the fool, not me, Alfonzo.”

“But you don’t _have_ to swear allegiance to him!” Lewis waved his hands around, making his macaw clap his wings in emphasis. “Albus never demanded anything like that, and this new gold one’s just a child. You can just go on as you were before.”

“Leaving things the same means acting as if Dumbledore’s the only choice, though. It means ignoring reality.” The Auror shook her head and looped her arm over her mare’s back, turning towards a door that was presumably her office. “Give it up, Lewis. Find someone to convert who’s as much of a fool as you are.”

The door shut with an echoing bang, and Lewis leaned on the wall and scowled at it. His macaw preened his hair in comfort. Albus smiled. After so many decades with Fawkes, he knew the comforting gestures of birds.

But the smile faded after a second. If Harry became the target of people who wanted a Lord to swear to…

That would change the political landscape in ways that Albus hadn’t anticipated. He had thought a few traditional wizards or ones more enamored than they should be with Harry’s golden familiar would address him as Lord, but not swear, because they would be cagey, pragmatic sorts wanting to keep their political freedom. Other people would be aware that Albus would be free someday, and refuse in order to keep their options open. If Harry _demanded_ it, that would scare others off. And some would simply never swear to someone with a serpent that looked so like Voldemort’s.

He might have a critical mass of people tired of Albus, though. That, Albus hadn’t foreseen.

He did find Madam Bones’s office and read the paperwork on her desk relating to the progress of his trial and what they were planning to do to ensure he was tried on each charge, but it was almost mechanical now. He was saddened to note that Harry’s Muggle relatives had been tried and condemned to a Transfiguration punishment. Muggles were ignorant of the nature of the wizarding world, and spending time as helpless animals would only make them feel more powerless and resentful. Placing them with qualified Mind-Healers, perhaps Muggleborns, would have been better.

In the end, he retreated to his cell and spent some time thinking about what his next step should be. Just because there were people willing to swear to Harry did not mean that a movement would start soon. And it did not mean that Harry would accept them. His upbringing in the Muggle world had gone a long way towards preserving his natural modesty.

But Albus decided he would have to start one of the tactics he had considered much earlier than he would have otherwise.

That night, when an Auror trainee and her tin dragonfly brought him dinner, Albus engaged her in small talk. It was still easy with those young ones who had grown up in awe of him; the girl kept blushing and casting glances at Fawkes on his perch as if she couldn’t believe that someone with a golden familiar was speaking to her. Albus smoothly guided the conversation around to where he wanted it to go.

“Did you know that it’s possible for golden familiars to arise from something other than an accident of birth?” he asked, and watched in delight as her mouth widened at what she must have thought was rare gossip.

“ _No_ ,” she breathed. “Really? _How_?”

“Oh, it can happen when someone corrupts a silver familiar and has them eat enough other silver ones,” Albus said, leaning back and letting his fork stir through the leftover noodles on his tray. He was telling the truth. Tom had let his Nagini consume the living bodies of silver familiars during the last war, the only way they could be eaten, since a familiar dissipated immediately on the death of their wizard or witch. Albus thought he had been aiming to turn Nagini gold. “It could also happen if someone else’s magic was added to a silver familiar’s magic. For example, you’ve heard of wish blessings?”

The trainee clasped her hands, while her dragonfly buzzed around her head. “I thought they were rare and powerful magic.”

“They are, but that does not mean they do not exist,” Albus told her gently. He personally thought that was that way Lily had saved young Harry, directing all the power of her magic into a wish to keep him safe. That had blessed Harry enough to save his life from the backlash of the Killing Curse—and, combined with the Horcrux, had lifted his familiar to be gold and serpentine. Albus grieved that young Lily had wrought such a mistake. “I know of a particular case in which a wish blessing made a silver familiar gold.”

“Oh, please tell me, sir, will you? The stories of golden familiars and their wizards were always my favorites!”

Albus granted her the smile of a parent indulging a favorite child, and began to drop hints. From the way her mouth and eyes both widened as the tale went on, he was sure she was picking up on them, all while assuming _he_ was not, that he was merely a mostly senile old man rambling his way through stories.

The rumors would begin to spread soon. People who suspected that Harry’s golden familiar was unnatural would not be so quick as to swear allegiance to him.

It was only a temporary measure, however. Albus knew he would need to do something more permanent if he didn’t wish to see Harry leading an army like Voldemort. Or _with_ Voldemort, given what the presence of the Horcrux in his scar meant.

But as a first strike from inside his cell, Albus thought it a particularly masterful one.


	24. Part Twenty-Four

“I think I can speak to Voldemort’s spirit as it flees. Maybe I can persuade it to stay and let us question it.”

Severus carefully lifted a hand and rubbed at his ears. “I could not have heard what I thought I heard,” he said politely when he was done. “Would you mind repeating that?”

“I want to talk to Voldemort. It probably won’t do much good, but no one has ever given him the benefit of the doubt. I have to try.”

Severus stared at Harry. He was sitting on a chair in Severus’s quarters that left his legs a good half a meter short of the floor, and he was petting Golden with a pensive expression on his face. Severus shook his head. “They do not give him the benefit of the doubt for _excellent_ reasons, Harry. Modifying the ritual now would be too dangerous in any case.”

“I didn’t mean that I wanted to modify the ritual. I just meant I wanted to talk to his spirit as it tried to flee the circle.”

“And how do you propose to get his attention?” Severus heard the strangled sound of his own voice and grimaced. He wished for some Firewhisky, despite the poor example it would have set.

“I’ll ask for it.” Harry shrugged and reached out to gently nudge Golden’s head off his lap. The snake curled up next to him, glancing around as if he was tracking a mouse in the far corners of Severus’s quarters. Severus sincerely hoped not. “When he sees me, he might try to attack me anyway.”

“I want you to do nothing to expose yourself to more danger.”

“I know. But he’s going to be pretty weak without anyone to possess, isn’t he?”

“Has it not occurred to you that he might try to possess _you_ , as the most powerful person in the room?” Severus glanced at the boy’s scar. There was also the matter of that, which Albus had hinted at one time formed a link to the Dark Lord. Since he had said nothing about it, Severus was unable to fathom the nature of the link, but it made him uneasy now, given the new information he had obtained from Quirinus.

“He might try,” Harry said, his voice calm. “But Golden has already assured me that he wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Severus rubbed his face. The oath he had taken to support Harry was nudging at him, the faintest of touches on his mind, like an attempted Legilimency reading that came from inside rather than outside. He supposed that nothing would be lost by letting him try.

“I do reserve the right to pull you out of danger the minute that something happens and it even _looks_ like the Dark Lord is trying to possess you.”

“Yes, Professor Snape.”

The memory of Harry’s grin as he left soothed something in Severus, and he did sleep more easily that night than he’d expected to.

*

Harry took a deep breath as he stood on one side of the circle that the professors—McGonagall and Snape, with a little help from Professor Sprout, who didn’t know exactly what they were doing—had set up. It was out near the edge of the Forbidden Forest, aligned with several trees and the lake in a way that Harry had read they had to do but which he wouldn’t have known how to do himself. He was glad the professors were doing it.

In the center of the circle lay Professor Quirrell and his poor rabbit, both asleep. Harry nibbled his lip as he watched them. He hoped they were both going to survive. He didn’t know yet.

Professor Snape had already fed them the necessary potions, and Professor Sprout was putting clumps of herbs around the edges. She just thought that Professor Quirrell was delusional and sick, because he’d been doing something to corrupt his familiar. She thought they were going to heal them. She would leave before the ritual began.

Harry watched Professor McGonagall sweeping her wand up, like she needed her arm to be loose and flexible, while Malkin stood next to her. Malkin looked like he was balancing on his toes, and he stretched his back as Harry watched. His eyes were looking straight at Alanna.

“Can you help me with magic like that someday?” Harry asked Golden, who was coiled up next to him with his body folded up in a circle. Only his head rose from it to rest on Harry’s leg.

Golden shifted so that the runes on his back caught the light. Harry nodded. “I mean, I know you already did, but wand magic? It seems like most of the magic that we can do so far is wandless.”

Golden wrapped around his leg in response. Harry smiled down at him. “I know. I’m just a first-year, and I can’t do everything Professor McGonagall does yet. I just wondered.”

His familiar nodded, and went back to looking at Alanna. Like Malkin, he probably had to concentrate on their enemy’s familiar, Harry thought. The humans here were going to concentrate on the human.

Professor Snape was standing on the other side of the ritual circle, which was made of cut lines in the dirt, and runes, and dead grass, and the stones that should block a spirit from trying to leave, his arms folded and his scowl bright and right there. Harry stood silently as he watched Professor Snape scan the circle. Harry knew he would find mistakes if there were any, even though that would mean redrawing the circle and moving the herbs around. Harry trusted Professor Snape.

He did go over and redraw one rune, it turned out, but he didn’t redraw the whole thing. When Harry asked why, Professor Snape shook his head and said shortly, “It was on the outside, so it didn’t influence the rest of the circle.” He reached up one hand, and Shadowstriker slithered down his arm, reaching the end of his fingers and draping over them like a vine. Harry watched in fascination. Shadowstriker looked like he was going to drop _off_ at any second.

“Watch her,” Professor Snape said. Harry thought of repeating the same thing in Parseltongue, but it was obvious that Shadowstriker understood. He did drop to the ground after all, and slithered over to a point of the circle that was opposite Professor McGonagall and Malkin.

Professor Sprout straightened up, puffing a little, and rubbed her brow. “Well, I hope that you can help the poor man. And poor Alanna! What torture it must be for a familiar to have to fight her friends because her wizard commands it so.” Bryony squeaked next to her, as if saying _she_ would never do that. Harry smiled at her. Bryony was one of the familiars who wanted to talk with Golden and the rest of them about changing things.

“Let me know if I can help any other way,” Professor Sprout said, and for a second she looked at Harry like she was going to curtsey to him. It made Harry uncomfortable. He was glad when Professor Sprout just turned and walked away back to the school, Bryony trundling at her heels.

“The moon is nearly risen,” Professor Snape said. Harry was about to tell him he knew that, when he recognized part of the ritual words. He stood silent, but he looked at Professor McGonagall, who had her wandless hand resting on Malkin’s back.

“The power of our wills is centered on his freedom,” she replied.

“Not under the burning light of the sun, which might hurt the connection between spirit and soul.”

“But under the soft darkness, which portrays our cradling wills.”

“We wish to help him recover.”

“We wish to help her expel the possessing spirit.”

The power in the words was starting to curl around the circle like smoke. Harry watched as the circle grew mistier and mistier. But when he looked into the center of it, Professor Quirrell and Alanna were as clear as ever.

And they were stretching and thrashing on the grass like they wanted to wake up.

Harry watched closely. Golden was silent and still beside him. By contrast, Malkin was stalking around Professor McGonagall with most of his fur standing on end, and Shadowstriker was flashing his fangs, weaving back and forth like a snake dancing to a charmer’s flute.

Professor Quirrell was sitting up and flopping down again like he was a puppet on strings. Harry flinched. Alanna appeared to run in her sleep, kicking out with her legs and almost fluttering her ears.

Harry wondered if he was the only one to hear the faint, thin cry that came from a distance and passed overhead like the cry of geese. When it reached the ritual circle, Professor Quirrell sat up again and screamed, too.

Something came bursting out of his ears and nose and mouth and eyes, basically taking any exit it could find from his face. At the same moment, silver boiled out of Alanna’s face as she sat up and combed desperately at her ears. Harry could see the threads of silver snap together on the ground. They looked somehow tarnished.

The spirits fled towards the side of the ritual circle farthest from where Harry stood. Professor Quirrell and Alanna fell down again, and this time, Harry thought they were really unconscious.

“Lord Voldemort!” Harry cried out, stepping forwards but not over the side of the circle.

The spirit swung back towards him. For a second, Harry saw a face in the smoke. It was a horrible face. It had red eyes like embers and a thin mouth and no nose. Then it dived towards him.

Golden reared up and opened his mouth. He didn’t hiss, but breathed out like a dragon. Harry felt a touch of warmth on his skin and smelled a sweet scent like burning sage.

Voldemort recoiled and screamed. The silver thing running across the grass beneath him flinched and made for the far side of the circle before the black smoke did.

“I just want to talk to you!” Harry yelled, not moving. “I want to know what can redeem you!”

He heard a hissing voice speak Parseltongue, _I do not want redemption,_ and he wasn’t sure if it was Voldemort or Nagini or both of them. Then they crossed the far side of the circle, past the stones that should have held them, and were gone. There was an explosion that blasted the left side of Harry’s face with shocking cold and the right side with dark flame, and then he fell to the ground and so did Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape.

Professor Quirrell screamed and began to thrash.

Professor Snape leaped to his feet. “We can still trap the spirits if we hurry!” he shouted, and spun to face the side of the Forbidden Forest where Voldemort and Nagini had gone.

“Our duty is to Quirinus!” Professor McGonagall shouted back, and then ran into the center of the circle—Harry supposed the power was gone now—so she could reach Professor Quirrell and Alanna.

Professor Snape hesitated. Harry saw Shadowstriker look at him a second before Snape did.

Harry sighed. He hated to let Voldemort and Nagini go, because they might try to possess someone else, and he still hoped he could talk to them and maybe get them to listen. But they did have to save someone who had been possessed. He nodded back into the circle.

Professor Snape took a few potions out of his pockets and went over to kneel down next to the people who were the real victims here.

Golden dropped back to the ground. Harry looked down and reached out to slowly cup the back of his neck. His scales were dull; they looked a lot more yellow than gold right now. And the runes had almost faded out of sight.

“It was that hard to protect me?” Harry whispered.

Golden flicked his tongue out. _Yes,_ he hissed in Parseltongue.

“Even with the circle?”

Golden bobbed his head.

Harry sighed, shaken. Voldemort must have a lot more power than people had told him. He didn’t want to lose Golden or someone else by confronting him. He would have to be more careful about that in the future.

“Did Voldemort try to possess _me_?” he thought to ask then.

Another head-bob.

Harry shivered and sat down on the grass beside Golden, letting him curl up in his lap so that he could get the warmth he needed. Most of the time, Golden liked to bask in the sun but didn’t seem to _need_ heat like other snakes. This time, he was exhausted.

 _I need to be more careful,_ Harry thought. _I want to give Voldemort a fair chance, but I never want someone to die because I did it._

*

Severus checked on Quirinus towards the morning, and was satisfied that the man was in as deep a sleep as potions could devise. Alanna lay on top of his stomach, her paws spread out so that as much of her touched her wizard’s bare skin as possible. Severus eyed her thoughtfully. Now that he came to think of it, he couldn’t remember seeing her perform such an action in the past few months, ever since Quirinus had come back from Albania. Before, she had sat in his lap often at the High Table and hopped up to sit on his desk when he taught. But lately, she had crouched shivering at his feet.

Severus hoped that was a sign that they would both recover fully.

He sneered at himself, but the sneer was half-hearted at best. Of course he was going to do what he could to spare people pain, because it was a part of walking that path he had sworn to Harry he would walk.

Besides…

The sneer turned to a smile as Severus left the hospital wing and limped slowly towards his quarters.

Some of the information he had learned from Quirinus was going to come into play later, but something could be useful _now_.

Severus sat down, despite his tiredness, to compose a careful letter to Madam Amelia Bones about the utter _carelessness_ of someone who would hide the Philosopher’s Stone in a school full of _children_.


	25. Part Twenty-Five

Albus looked up with a pleased smile as the door to his cell opened. He thought he was making progress with both of the two youngest Aurors assigned to watch him, who seemed thrilled and fascinated to learn about his theories on the origins of Harry’s golden familiar. But his smile dropped away when he realized it was Amelia Bones stepping in.

Her tiger was too big to enter the cell next to her and had to wait outside, but Albus could hear his growl filling the corridor.

“Is this true, Albus?” Amelia asked. She was staring at a letter in her hand.

“Perhaps I would know if you let me see the writing,” Albus suggested mildly. He could feel his heartbeat returning to normal. Perhaps Amelia had heard about his efforts at persuasion and had come to cut them off, but that did not undo the effect of planting his seeds in willing hearts and minds. His two young visitors would begin to think about what he had said, and surely spread the secret to trusted friends and confidantes.

“That you hid the Philosopher’s Stone in a _school_?”

Albus controlled the widening his eyes wanted to do, and only sighed. “It was the best place to hide it, Amelia.”

“I fail to see _why_.”

“Because Hogwarts is the safest place in Britain, of course! And my old friend Nicholas Flamel felt that he could no longer hide it—”

“Why not?”

“There had been threats,” Albus said, picking his way through the field of truth with care. “Nicholas feared that someone who is currently a bodiless wraith would attempt to gain access to the Stone, and would do anything they could to anyone who was standing in his way. Nicholas and Perenelle are not trained Aurors, you know, or battle wizards. He gave the Stone to me to hide.”

“Why not have it remain in Gringotts?”

“My dear Amelia, surely you know that Gringotts was broken into two months ago? It’s true that the thief didn’t manage to steal anything, but on the other hand, they didn’t catch him, either. That says to me that the bank’s reputation may be exaggerated.”

Amelia gave him a quiet, grim look. “And you think that Hogwarts is safer? For the _children_?”

“With the protections that I placed on the Stone, the children would never have known it was there.”

“Don’t lie to me, Albus.” Amelia just sounded disgusted now. “Susan wrote to me the night after she was Sorted that you’d told the students to say away from the third-floor corridor. You think that _all_ the students would respect that warning? Why advertise it? Why go out of your way to tell this thief, whoever he is, that the treasure he’s seeking is most likely in the school?”

Albus blinked. “I didn’t advertise it, Amelia. Warning and advertisement are not the same things.”

“For adults, Albus, no, they’re not. For _children_?” Amelia shook her head. “And you haven’t told me who this disembodied wraith is, yet, or why you’re so sure he would overcome the Flamels.”

“Voldemort will return, Amelia. You know that.”

“The wraith is Voldemort?”

Albus nodded. For some reason, she hadn’t flinched when she said the name. He had been sure she had, last time. “He would go after the Philosopher’s Stone the minute he had the chance, to try and secure himself immortality. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Then why not hide it in some Unplottable place?” Amelia asked, her voice flat. Albus had known her for years and never heard her sound like that. “Or under the Fidelius?”

“The Potters’ fate showed us how easily the Fidelius can be subverted. I didn’t want to rely on a notoriously tricky spell to safeguard the one magical item that Voldemort must _never_ get his hands on.”

“Then make yourself the Secret-Keeper. Or do you think Voldemort can overcome you as a wraith?”

Somehow this was not the way Albus had envisioned the conversation going. He had thought she would either be openly hostile or accepting. Instead, she simply sounded—tired.

“Has something else happened that I should be aware of, Amelia?”

Amelia nodded and took another letter from her pocket. “I received this—report isn’t too strong a word. From the Headmistress. She reports that they found the professor who was suspected of being possessed by Voldemort, confirmed that it _was_ him, and freed him. The wraith is gone, bodiless once more.”

Albus sat down hard. “I wanted to avoid that,” he whispered. “They must have conducted the possession ritual without Quirinus’s consent. That has caused _untold_ violation to his mind and body. I am amazed that—he is still alive?”

“I don’t know exactly how much violence or violation de-possession rituals usually inflict,” Amelia said stonily. “I’ve never done one. But you are seriously telling me, Albus, that you put a possessed man’s free will ahead of the safety of your students?”

“You are arguing I should not have? You are arguing that it is a _good_ thing that Quirinus’s consent was stripped from him, and he was forced to do something that I could have persuaded him into?”

“Then why weren’t you persuading him _then_?” Amelia was actually shouting now, which made Albus flinch back from her. “Why did you leave him in a school full of _children_? _Children,_ Albus! Bad enough to have the Stone there, but to let the man wander around with Voldemort in his head—are you insane?”

“I knew what I was doing,’ Albus said. “I never would have let him hurt a child, Amelia. But I had to give him the chance to seek out redemption on his own. Not force it on him.”

He felt grief curdling in his stomach. Quirinus would never be the same now that Minerva, and certainly others, had stripped his chance to come willingly to repentance from him. The bright young man Albus remembered from before his sabbatical to Albania was probably gone forever.

“I find myself caring little about his _redemption,_ next to the danger you put the students in.” Amelia turned away with a swirl of her robes. “This information shall be submitted to the Wizengamot as they consider your trial, Albus.”

And she left, and left Albus to put his head in his hands.

Couldn’t they _see_ how valuable second chances were? It was true that the second chance he’d given Severus hadn’t worked out as Albus wished, but he never regretted giving it to the young man. He could still make something of himself. He hadn’t had to wreck his life when Lily died.

Quirinus had deserved that second chance, needed it. He would always be a danger to the students now, and to Minerva, because he would remember that she had ripped a spirit he might have opened himself up to willingly out of his head. He had needed to be persuaded, not coerced.

Albus sighed a little. He supposed he should grimly resign himself to the idea that he would need to battle Quirinus someday when he was free again.

*

“If you are sure you want to see him.”

“I do.” Harry smiled up at Professor Snape, understanding why he was trying so hard to keep Harry safe, and then stepped through the door of the infirmary. Golden was right beside him, and Shadowstriker streaked across the floor and under Professor Quirrell’s bed, where he could climb up one of the legs to bite if he needed to .And Professor Snape stood behind him with his wand in his hand.

Professor Quirrell was sitting up in bed with his rabbit on his lap. He was petting her fur, but he turned around and looked when Harry and Professor Snape came into the room. He looked utterly lost and sad.

“I’m sorry,” Professor Quirrell said, and he sounded the way some of Dudley’s victims did when they were pleading with him to stop. “I never meant to—it seemed so _reasonable_ at the time, to fight you. I didn’t know.”

“A poor excuse, Quirinus—”

“Please don’t argue with him, Professor Snape,” Harry said over his shoulder, which made Professor Snape close his mouth really hard. “It’s all right, Professor Quirrell. I know that maybe you invited Voldemort to come in willingly, but that wasn’t really _you_ in the school the past few months.”

“Some of it was me,” Professor Quirrell whispered, bowing his head. Alanna nuzzled his cheek and wrapped her front paws around his neck. “My pride, my ambition. I thought that I could take revenge on my enemies. That was what made me invite him inside at first, you know. I was so _sure_ that I could master his dark spirit and just use his power. And then people who scorned me would have paid.”

Professor Snape was sneering so hard that Harry could feel it without turning to look at him. But he didn’t say anything. Harry just sighed and asked, “Do you still feel the same right now, sir? Do you want him back?”

“ _No_!” Professor Quirrell’s whole body flinched in the bed. “Maybe I could have put up with what he did to me and counted it worth the price. But not what he did to my sweet Alanna.”

“That is exactly what I would like to talk to you about, Quirinus.” Professor Snape’s voice was smooth. “I have never heard of a possession like this. Usually, a possessing spirit is the soul of someone who has died, and that means their familiar is gone. But the Dark Lord brought his familiar _with_ him?”

Harry shivered at the thought of losing Golden. He hugged the side of his neck, which made Golden rear his head up and touch his nose to Harry’s cheek.

 _Not until the end,_ Golden told him in Parseltongue and with the motion of his body as well. _Not before you die. Together until then._

Harry came back from the hug and managed to listen to what Professor Quirrell was saying. It sounded interesting, although he didn’t think he understood all of it.

“The Dark Lord has tied his spirit to the world,” the professor was whispering. “Through anchors, I understood that much, although he punished me most terribly when I questioned what they were and where. It means that he cannot die because his soul is bound here, not his body. That means his familiar is bound, as well. She is the extension of his soul.”

“Anchors?” Harry asked.

“A matter for us to talk over at a later date, Mr. Potter,” Professor Snape said, a little sternly. “There is no doubt in your mind that he has corrupted his familiar, then?”

“Of course he has. Most familiars have moral lines they draw, you know that, Severus. They would refuse to do things that they find morally wrong.”

“Ah, so are an advocate of _that_ school of thought? I saw too many Death Eaters’ familiars fighting on their side during the war to believe that. I believe that familiars are ultimately loyal to their wizards or witches, not principle. So they would do whatever their wizard required of them.”

Harry looked down at Golden and mouthed, “Are they?”, but Golden ignored him.

“I believe that Dark Arts induce a certain sort of corruption, as well.” Professor Quirrell bowed his head. “And I cannot say I am clean.”

“Spare me the spiritual nonsense. I want you to tell me as much as you can about the Dark Lord and what you learned of his plans, and where his spirit might have gone now.”

“You and Mr. Potter?”

“No.” Professor Snape turned around and gave Harry a scowl. “You will go, Mr. Potter. You have seen that Professor Quirrell and his familiar are healing. What is left is adult matters.”

“I still want to know what you’re planning, sir.”

“I will explain it to you later. In an _age-appropriate_ fashion.”

Harry studied Professor Snape’s face, but he looked exactly the way Uncle Vernon always did when there was no chance that someone would move him, not even Dudley’s begging. Harry nodded and gave the professor in the bed and Alanna a small smile. “I’m glad that you’re recovering, sir.”

Professor Quirrell just looked miserable. Harry sighed and walked away from the hospital wing with Golden slithering in front of him. He knew there were probably laws that made being possessed illegal or something, but he hoped they wouldn’t punish Professor Quirrell too harshly. He already didn’t like some of the wizarding world’s laws.

*

“So I ask you for a verdict.”

Amelia stood in front of the Wizengamot with her hand on Phantom’s ruff, for support as much as to remind others of how strong she was, how powerful her familiar was, and the position she held. The idea that Albus would willingly introduce such threats into a _school_ and tolerate a possessed professor in the name of some kind of second chance was disgusting.

The Wizengamot members had been inclined to shout at her first, especially the ones who were still loyal to Dumbledore, but as she went on, they had grown quieter and quieter. Amelia glanced from the face to face, and a small dollop of satisfaction curled in the middle of her stomach. She knew she would get the verdict she wanted.

 _If only because some of them would be frightened to vote in favor of Dumbledore, when they know what_ else _they’re voting in favor of._

Slowly, hands went up on the side of conviction. There were a few inveterate supporters who made passionate speeches about how Dumbledore himself deserved a second chance, but they were overborne easily. Amelia nodded as the official court crier, occupying a sinecure position that normally amounted to nothing much, stood up and cried out softly, “ _Guilty_.” She tapped her crystal-topped staff and sank back into her seat, her tin guinea pig gathered to her chest.

“Very well,” Amelia said. “Then it remains only to decide the sentence.”


	26. Part Twenty-Six

Albus sighed a little as he walked behind Amelia into the courtroom. “Are these suppression cuffs really necessary?” he asked, gesturing to the one that still bound his wrist. Fawkes, huddled on his shoulder, chirped miserably. “You must know by now that I’m not going to try to break away from you or harm anyone in your employ.”

Amelia kept walking without looking back at him, which Albus thought unfair. But he quieted those thoughts as he encountered the stares of the Wizengamot. He must get through this and back into the outside world. Carefully making Harry safe, and safe in his interactions with others, was more important than having the last word.

 _Or even persuading Amelia._ She was not the only member of the Wizengamot and would not be alone in deciding his fate.

Amelia turned around then, and Albus took his seat in the chair, felt the chains grip his wrists and link together with the suppression cuff, and shook his head. Then he turned a calm smile on the Wizengamot.

He could tell nothing from their faces as they watched him. That was unusual. He might have tried to dip into a few minds through the eyes of those who stared at him most steadily, but Amelia was speaking.

“So we are decided? It was unanimous? Or all but,” Amelia added, with what sounded like a smile in her voice, as a few hands rose near the back of the rooms. Albus marked their owners to himself.

“Tell me what it is to be, Amelia.” Albus made his voice as gentle as he could, as resigned. “Azkaban? Transforming me into an animal, the way that you did to that poor child’s relatives?”

Amelia stiffened for a moment, as if she had forgotten he was there. Then she turned around. “No. You might be able to persuade the guards to let you go, or whoever we assigned to watch over you might be a secret sympathizer.”

“I do hope that _some_ people out there would recognize that my guilt has been exaggerated.”

“So we are using a punishment that the Ministry has not used in decades, because it can only be used on those who have golden familiars, and there have been few enough of those.”

“There is only one now.”

Amelia blinked, but not as if she understood him. Albus regretted that he did not have more time to teach her. “So are going to use the Dream Labyrinth.” She nodded behind him.

Albus turned around in his chair at the same moment as Fawkes shrieked in fear and ruffled all his fathers. Albus reached up and stroked him, while he stared at the construction that several strong Aurors were manhandling into the courtroom. It was made of twisted spirals of gold, silver, bronze, copper, and tin, all curving around each other and in to a center that seemed to reflect and baffle Albus’s gaze on purpose. The center looked as if it were made of pearl.

“What is this?” Albus stroked Fawkes with one hand and turned to gesture at the artifact with the other. “I have never seen this, and yet it looks ancient.”

“Well, as I said, Albus, until recently, the Ministry didn’t have anyone with a golden familiar to punish. But we found this when we read about the punishment on the books, and it’s one of the options I presented to the Wizengamot. They voted for it overwhelmingly.”

“Tell me why.”

“It will place you into a dreaming state,” Amelia told him softly. “It will take you through all the convictions that brought you to this pass—the things that only someone with a golden familiar can do, like using your spreading magic on people, which we think you must have done for years without being caught. You will have to confront your pride, your hypocrisy, your lies, and any other weaknesses that riddle you. The Dream Labyrinth relies on the magic of its prisoner to work, and needs so much that only those with golden familiars can power it. But that’s precisely what makes it brilliant. Those with golden familiars are more likely to fall victim to the weaknesses of power than anyone else.”

Albus licked his lips. They were so dry that it was painful. Fawkes cowered so low on his shoulder that he felt like a tiny feathery mound when Albus touched him. Albus shook his head. “You cannot mean to do this to me.”

“Why not?”

“I am _the Headmaster of Hogwarts._ ”

“You were. But you misbehaved, Albus. None of us voted for putting you back in power, even the ones who thought you should be spared the Dream Labyrinth.”

“You would place me into a prison I stand no chance of being released from?”

“Did I imply that? No, Albus, you will be released. When you have confronted and come to terms with every weakness that made you fall as you did. But,” Amelia added, with a gentleness that Albus hated her for, “that might take a very, very long time.”

Albus stared at the Dream Labyrinth and shook his head. He could not believe the Wizengamot thought this the more compassionate punishment. “And have you thought of what will happen to our world in the meantime?”

“Please explain what you mean by that, Albus.”

“I am the only defense you have left against Voldemort!”

“Thought it was the Potter boy,” muttered an old witch with silver hair that Albus didn’t recognize from his trial. “Thought he was the one who made his body dissolve into dust and air, or something.”

Albus hesitated for only a moment before he began to speak. This was not the way he had wanted to handle the matter, but if they really did intend to put him into the Dream Labyrinth, it might be his best chance. “The boy’s golden familiar is a false trick. A combination of the fact that Voldemort attacked him as a child and the legacy he left behind when he did.”

Amelia said nothing, did nothing, but her tiger stalked a single step forwards. Albus eyed the beast. Fawkes still wore the suppression cuff, or their victory in battle with Amelia and her Phantom would have been assured. “What legacy?”

Albus grimaced. _A less than ideal situation._ On the other hand, it would also ensure that the truth reached more people more rapidly than being dribbled out by the naïve Aurors he had spoken with. “You must have realized by now that Voldemort has corrupted his familiar. She would never have joined him in Dark Arts otherwise.”

“Yes?”

The Wizengamot was silent, staring. Albus wished that he could feel he was capturing their attention and not merely astonishing them with his obviousness. “That means that it is possible for him to break his soul apart. He has left a shard of his soul behind in Mr. Potter’s scar. _That_ is why Mr. Potter’s familiar is gold and a serpent. Having two souls in his body gives Mr. Potter more power than any child should have, more than one body could contain alone.”

The clamor that erupted from the Wizengamot made Albus wince and Fawkes crouch even lower on his shoulder. Amelia tried to shout for quiet, and finally lifted her wand and caused a firework to spiral into the air. Golden sparks detonated and showered down around the courtroom. Amelia lowered her wand and stared hard at Albus. “What is your evidence for this?”

“I know that Mr. Potter carries a Horcrux in his scar,” Albus told her. “I have experience with soul magic, and I confirmed my suspicions the moment Mr. Potter stepped through the doors of Hogwarts.”

“Go on. Why is it unnatural for him to have a serpent familiar?”

“When both his parents were Gryffindor and fought against the Dark Lord who has a serpent familiar? My dear, why _would_ it be natural?”

“Oi!” said someone on one of the lower benches, making Albus wince as he thought of the depths of indignity to which the Wizengamot had fallen. Not that they hadn’t proven it by trying to convict _him_. “You can’t _possibly_ mean that! My cousin Cormac McLaggen is in Gryffindor, and he has a lizard familiar! And he’s as Gryffindor as they come!”

“There is a difference between a harmless lizard and a gigantic serpent—”

“As I recall,” Amelia interrupted, “You-Know-Who’s familiar was a large viper. I know that Mr. Potter’s Golden is an anaconda. They are not even the same _species_ of serpent, Albus! And you dare to claim that Mr. Potter has a snake because of You-Know-Who?”

“There cannot be any other reason,” Albus said steadily. He watched Amelia’s face settle into lines of disbelief, and wanted to sigh. Of course she would want to resist the implications, and the knowledge that Harry would have to be killed to free him from the Horcrux and the world from his influence. But her disbelief was not Albus’s problem. “The power of the two souls in his body has combined to give him a golden familiar, as well.”

“Pull the other one!” someone shouted, to snickering. Once again, Albus mourned the Wizengamot of old.

“Think about it,” Albus said. “When was the last wizard born to the gold before me?”

There was some muttering, but Griselda Marchbanks answered. “That would have been Erin Gaunt. She and that golden sphinx of hers. She died in 1759, I think.”

“And she had some Peverell blood in her lineage,” Albus said. “As I have some Gryffindor in mine. But there is no such blood in the Potters. Harry’s parents certainly did not have golden familiars. Where did that power _come_ from? Why would it suddenly have flowered in this child, who was not that powerful when he was a baby? I should know. I visited his parents.”

“Albus,” Amelia said, giving him an incredulous look. “You know very well that there is _so_ Peverell blood in the Potters. And some strain of Gryffindor, too, I think, although maybe not as direct as yours. Not to mention all those studies that St. Mungo’s has tried to conduct on whether people actually inherit their level of magical power and the colors of their familiars from their parents. They can’t find any correlation. Abandon your ridiculous theories and accept that your faults will be corrected in the Dream Labyrinth.”

“You should at least examine Mr. Potter’s Horcrux. Perhaps there _is_ a way to destroy it without harming the boy. I don’t know for certain. And when it is gone, then his familiar will turn silver, and back to the species that he should have been born with.”

Amelia only shook her head and gestured to the Aurors who stood behind Albus’s chair. Albus scanned the faces of the Wizengamot in front of him as the Aurors dragged him to his feet and towards the twisting construction of metal. He could see some doubt, some disbelief. He could only hope that they would remember his words in truth and fight Voldemort as necessary.

Then the Aurors turned him to face the Labyrinth.

Albus cast one glance behind him that he hoped would be remembered as well, and then stepped forwards.

For a moment, he couldn’t see how the Labyrinth would envelop him. It seemed to be a hollow frame of metal, something he could stand within but escape from easily. And then the metal spirals began to spin, and Fawkes gave a long scream and tried to soar off his shoulder, even though a chain still connected the suppression cuff around his leg with the one on Albus’s wrist.

Albus caught and stroked his familiar, and then stared around. The courtroom had vanished. They were in the midst of a series of tunnels that gleamed grey, gold, brown, and red. Albus took a slow step, and one part of the wall released a shimmering mist.

Albus stiffened as he saw the flash of spells within the mist. _No! Not that one_!

But the labyrinth and the Wizengamot were merciless, and Albus was propelled into the moment when he had dueled Gellert and Aberforth and Ariana had died.

*

Harry put down the newspaper down. “That’s what they should do,” he said aloud.

“What are you talking about?” Neville asked.

“They put Dumbledore in a sort of maze where he has to face his weaknesses and learn better about himself.”

Neville blinked and leaned over to read the article. Harry fed Golden a piece of egg and nodded to himself. That was the sort of punishment that would help people come out of it feeling good about themselves and not hurt them too badly.

_There must be some way that I can make that happen for other people, too._

Harry looked around the Great Hall and saw how some people kept turning to stare at him.

_It’s not for the best reasons, but maybe I do have a hope of making that come true._


	27. Part Twenty-Seven

“Thank you for coming.”

“That sounds important,” Draco muttered. “Even kind of self-important.”

Harry hit him on the shoulder and looked around the old Defense classroom he’d found halfway between Gryffindor Tower and the dungeons. Almost every friend he’d made in Hogwarts was there, and at least a few of them were sitting with people who weren’t from their Houses. Ron, Hermione, Neville, Cedric, Cormac, Draco, Derek and his tin sparrow Singer, Fred and George Weasley, Susan Bones and her bronze winged horse Camilla, and Tracey Davis and her copper butterfly Justina. Harry had only started getting to know Susan and Tracey in the last few weeks, but their familiars had been willing to talk to Golden.

That was all it took, really.

“I really want to keep things from happening like happened with Dumbledore,” Harry said into the silence as they were all looking at him. “People trusted him too much. They thought he was just good because he had a golden familiar. I want to keep that from happening again.”

“But if you’re good and have a golden familiar, then everything is already solved,” said Tracey. She had Justina perched on her fingers and acted like she was paying more attention to her than Harry. “We won’t have another problem like that with Dumbledore locked up in the Dream Labyrinth.”

Harry laughed when he saw the way Tracey was _really_ looking at him, from under her eyelashes. “Come on. You don’t think that, Tracey.”

“Well, I wanted to see what you would say. But why is it such a huge problem?”

“Because of the _blindness_ of that trust,” Hermione said, taking over. Harry was glad to let her. She knew how to say it better, anyway. “Because too many wizards and witches assume that the color of someone’s familiar says something really _important_ about them. Because people aren’t questioning themselves when they hear that Dumbledore endangered children and wondering how that could have happened. They’re just saying that he must have corrupted his familiar and that’s the end of it. And some people are saying that it’s good Harry and Golden are around now, because we _have_ to have someone with a gold to be lord.”

Harry made a face. He really hated that. “I don’t think the same things as Dumbledore, but what if I did? What defense would people have against me? We have to make it so that people are more independent. We have to destroy the hierarchy.”

“You can’t—you want to destroy familiars?” Susan blurted. She touched Camilla’s shoulder. Camilla was sort of hunched over.

“Not what I meant,” Harry said, holding back the groan that wanted to come out. Golden nudged his hand, and he smiled down at him. Yes, he could see how that would have come out the wrong way. “Sorry. I just meant that we have to stop people from thinking that tin and copper familiars somehow make you inferior or something. It’s _not_ true.”

“But people with those familiars are weaker magically,” Cormac said, even if he looked kind of resentful about saying it, and Antonio was coiling restlessly around his feet. “That’s just a fact.”

“I want you to tell me that what means. Because everyone just assumes that it’s true and no one tells me what it _means_.”

Cormac blinked at him. “What do you mean? That’s the way it is. I mean, look, Golden has runes on him, and I know that Antonio is never going to have them. And Golden can communicate with you in Parseltongue and show you the future and all that.”

“Show me the _future_?”

Cormac looked at Draco, who shrugged and didn’t look apologetic when Harry turned around and glared at him. “Maybe just the present. Maybe just books. You weren’t all that clear when you described what Golden was showing you.”

Harry shook his head. “We’re getting off track. Look, Cormac, I want you to take out your wand and cast the strongest spell you know at me.”

Cormac turned pale, and Antonio stopped moving as though he’d turned into a statue of a lizard. “What—mate, you can’t be serious.”

“You’re convinced that you’re a lot magically weaker than me, right? So any curse that you shoot at me shouldn’t land. Or if it does, then it shouldn’t hurt me. It should be like getting bitten by a fly, right?”

“I just—I mean, I don’t want to do that. It seems disrespectful.”

Harry folded his arms. He would have to use their respect against them again, it seemed. “But it would be okay to turn around and walk away when someone with a golden familiar makes a request like that of you?”

Cormac grumbled and grunted constantly under his breath as he got his wand out. Antonio took a stiff stance a little to the back of his right foot, and Harry, who was watching Antonio more than Cormac, saw the soft copper glow that surrounded him for a second before it shot up to Cormac’s wand.

“ _Reducto_!”

The curse came flying at Harry. He didn’t move, didn’t even unfold his arms, and in the end, Golden was the one who reared up in front of him, all his runes glowing, and absorbed the curse in a flash of yellow light before it could touch Harry. He gave Harry a vaguely reproachful look while he did it, too.

“See,” Cormac said, sounding a little breathless as he lowered his wand. “Your familiar stopped it. That makes you more powerful than me.”

Harry exchanged a silent glance with Tracey. They’d already planned this, but he wanted to make sure that she didn’t back out. Tracey nodded and stood up.

“Good, Cormac. Thanks. Now, can you cast the same cure at Tracey?”

Cormac looked as if he really might faint. “But it could hurt her! She’s only on the same level that I am, and she’s a first-year, and she doesn’t have a familiar who’s a snake, and—”

Tracey tilted her head back and gave him a look of complete disdain. “Oh, so just because my familiar is a butterfly, you don’t think she’s worth anything?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said that I thought I would hurt you—”

“And that’s really a threat, when you think about it. Except that you won’t do what Harry asks, and you’re acting like I’m worthless because I have a copper familiar. What does that say about you, then? And especially when your familiar scuttles around on the ground, and can’t even _fly_ —”

Cormac launched the curse, even though he looked horrified a second later. Tracey dodged easily out of the way, and the curse cracked some of the stones of the wall. Cormac looked at his wand like he couldn’t believe it.

“See?” Harry asked. “She wasn’t harmed.”

“But—I mean, her familiar didn’t protect her. Not the way Golden did you.”

“There’s more than one way to resist a curse, though. That’s the problem.” Harry turned around and looked at everyone else, although some people were nodding and some were puzzled. Golden reared up next to him, and Harry put his hand on his head. “We just keep talking and talking about magical strength and familiar color, as if that predicts _everything_! But you can dodge spells, and you can trick people, the way Tracey tricked Cormac into throwing that curse when he didn’t plan to. We’re blind, and we keep _acting_ like it. I just want to propose that we not act like it. That we start thinking.”

“But if you lead this effort, and people follow you because you have Golden, then aren’t you just replicating the hierarchy?”

Harry smiled at Hermione. They hadn’t specifically planned to have her ask that question, but he’d known she would. “Of course. But eventually, I hope to be able to lay that burden down. And I think it’s a burden, yeah. Adults are looking at me like they expect me to solve all the problems of the world. It’s kind of scary.”

“What’s going to make us different from any other reform movement?” Draco asked, and that question _had_ been planned. “I know there have been others, usually by people with bronze familiars when they want to be treated better by people with silver ones. My parents taught me about them. They always failed.”

“That’s because they pitted one group of wizards against each other,” Harry said firmly. “They said they were working against the hierarchy, but they just wanted to change who was on top. There are some people who aren’t going to work with us, but that’s not going to be because of the color of their familiar, which is just _stupid_. I mean, look around this room! We’ve got people with familiars of every color. We can work together. We can do this.”

“It’s going to be pretty hard, though,” Derek whispered. He flushed when people glared at him, notably Draco and Cormac. Harry noticed that, and his eyes narrowed. Just because Derek’s familiar was a tin one didn’t mean he didn’t have the right to speak. “I mean, not all of us are the Boy-Who-Lived.”

“I know,” Harry said. “And that’s where we’re going to use their respect for me against them again. They want to listen to someone with a golden familiar? Then they’re going to listen to me, even if I’m saying something that they don’t like.”

“But what’s going to make us different from any of the other reform movements Malfoy talked about?” Neville asked. He was holding Trevor hard enough that Trevor was squirming.

“Because our familiars are willing to talk to each other,” Harry said, and turned to Golden. He’d planned things with various people in the room, but now he had to wait and see if what he’d planned with Golden would actually work.

Golden looked at him quietly, and then he twisted his neck in what Harry had learned was like a smile. He breathed out a little as Golden moved into the middle of the room and began to dance. A soft, rich yellow glow surrounded both him and Harry, and Harry, knowing what Golden needed, gave him all the magic he wanted.

The light began to form images, the way that the flames in the Hufflepuff common room sometimes did when Harry stared into them. Then they began to change colors. Golden was there, and then he transformed into a silver bat, and then into a leaping copper doe, and then a tin hare speeding across a field with legs running beside him, and then a bronze cat who reminded Harry of Professor McGonagall’s familiar Malkin.

The images began to fade. But then Kali launched herself off Draco’s shoulder, and came over and placed her claw in the flames. They changed and surged, and Harry saw Draco’s face twist a little as a silver aura surrounded him. When the pictures formed again, they were Kali, who became a silver rat, a copper kingfisher, and a shining tin trout—or Harry thought it was a trout—before they faded.

“So, what does that mean?” Cormac whispered as the flames faded altogether.

It was Ron who answered, his eyes bright. “It means that familiars come back to the world again and again. They change colors when they’re reborn. They’re what the wizard they bond with needs them to be, or expressions of their souls. They’re _not_ the same all the time.” He turned to glance at Harry. “So it’s stupid to act like they’re somehow fixed and we can’t change anything.”

Harry nodded. “Golden has been all sorts of different colors. Maybe not every familiar has, but at least it’s common to change. This is the kind of truth that the familiars haven’t told wizards, but—”

“Why did they never tell us before now?” Susan demanded.

“Because there was disagreement,” Harry said, glancing at Golden as he talked, to make sure that he wouldn’t get it wrong. Golden only swayed in place. “Some of them _are_ completely loyal to their wizards, and that means supporting them even if the familiars think they’re wrong. Others wanted to tell the truth of the hierarchy, but not every one of them can speak with their wizards the way Golden can speak with me in Parseltongue. But—it’s not natural, the idea that everyone with a certain color of familiar has a certain level of magical power. It’s not _real._ We made it up.”

“I met,” Derek whispered, and then he cleared his throat and started again. “I met a woman with a copper bloodhound right after I got to Diagon Alley. She told me that her familiar could sniff out any trace of blood that had been spilled in the last month, even if someone cleaned it up. Other familiars can’t do that, even if they’re silver.” He looked at Hermione and Draco, who both shook their heads. “I think people probably know some of this already, and they’re just lying to themselves.”

Harry nodded. “And we won’t let them anymore. Are you with me?”

And even though it took a moment, all of them, one by one, said they were.

 _We really are going to change the world,_ Harry thought. _It starts here._


	28. Part Twenty-Eight

“What is this about, Minerva?”

Severus stood with his arms folded in front of Minerva’s desk. He knew that she’d been working hard on teaching Transfiguration as well as being the Headmistress, interviewing people to take over the Transfiguration classes for her, dealing with Quirinus’s Healers, and attending to all the other small frictions of the school that happened between the teachers and students. He still didn’t think that should have caused this amount of darkness in her eyes.

“I received this letter yesterday, Severus,” she said, and held it out to him.

Severus read it quickly. It was from Amelia Bones, and it outlined, in bald language, the claims Albus had made just before they had put him into the Dream Labyrinth. The word “Horcrux” leaped out and burned into Severus’s eyes.

He lowered the letter and looked at Minerva. “You believe him,” he said hoarsely.

“Not about the Horcrux being the reason that Harry has a golden familiar, no.” Minerva leaned wearily back against the window and stared out at the snow sifting down over the grounds. “But about the Horcrux _existing_ in poor Harry’s scar? Yes.”

“Then you think that is the method Voldemort has used to gain immortality.” Severus felt illness eating at his stomach. He knew of Horcruxes as he did most other Dark curses and Dark Arts; he had studied those voraciously when he first joined the Death Eaters. But he had never thought someone would _use_ them.

They required, among other things, cutting off a bit of a familiar’s body and throwing it into the murdered body that was the source of the Horcrux’s vile power.

_That he would mutilate his familiar—that she would allow him—_

Of course, there were other ways to corrupt a familiar. For all Severus knew, Voldemort had done those things long before he made his first Horcrux, and coerced Nagini into agreeing with him.

“Yes, I do.” Minerva jolted Severus back into the conversation with her words. “And I have no idea how to discover where they are, or how many there are. There _must_ be more than one. I do not think that the one he created in Harry is—he cannot know about it, Severus, or he wouldn’t have attacked him the way he did in the ritual circle.”

Severus nodded. He had already come to the same conclusion. “Quirinus has no ideas?”

“I’ve interviewed the poor man again and again, and so has his Mind-Healer. I believe him when he says the wraith never shared the information with him.”

Severus sighed. He hated the thought, but he did believe Quirinus was telling the truth. Which left them in possession of one horrible truth, but not the ones that would have aided in destroying the Horcruxes.

He did have one more thing that he wanted to say, though. “Even if it’s the truth about Harry’s scar, I’m not going to help anyone kill the boy.”

“ _Kill_? Severus, what—”

“I think that was Albus’s plan.” Severus had thought he’d descended to the absolute depths when it came to Albus Dumbledore, but now the nausea clawed heavily at his belly. “That he believed that he would have to kill the boy, or perhaps Golden, to get rid of the Horcrux, and get rid of Voldemort. For all we know, he might come out of the Dream Labyrinth still believing it. I’m not going to stand aside and let anyone harm the boy or his familiar.”

“Of course not,” Minerva muttered, after a minute of stunned silence. “I’d help you defend him. I—it makes horrible sense that Albus would think of that. But _I’m_ never going to think of it, Severus. If that helps you.”

Severus nodded shortly. Then he picked up the letter that Madam Bones had sent to Minerva and read it over again, before putting it aside so that he could discuss which candidate she should hire to take over her Transfiguration duties. He was Deputy Headmaster now in all but name.

He knew, as he went back to his office that night, that he would take that position. It would help him fulfill his oath to protect Harry, and it would do Slytherin House good to have someone in so powerful a post who could advocate for them.

 _And it will help me be ready if Albus ever breaks out of the Labyrinth or comes back,_ Severus admitted to himself as he sat stroking Shadowstriker, staring into the flames of the fire on the hearth.

*

“Can you stay behind after class, please, Mr. Potter.”

Harry nodded at Hermione’s and Neville’s concerned faces, and stepped up to Professor Quirrell. The man had returned to teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts after a few weeks in the hospital wing. His face was almost back to a normal color now. He had spent the whole class in contact with Alanna. Either she was on his lap, or she was sitting on his foot while he stood, or she rode his shoulder when Professor Quirrell had to demonstrate a spell.

And the stutter was gone. Harry knew that even the people who didn’t have a clue Professor Quirrell had been possessed were grateful for that.

“Yes, sir?” Harry asked politely. He had no more fear of Professor Quirrell. The man had attacked him because he was possessed. He wasn’t possessed anymore. So he wasn’t going to attack Harry anymore. That seemed simple to Harry, even though he knew that some people disagreed.

Professor Quirrell just looked at him with a still face for a while. Then he shivered and bent over, hanging onto Alanna. At first Harry thought he was going to be sick or something, and looked around for something he could use as a bin. Then he realized that the professor was _bowing_ to him for some reason.

“Don’t do that, sir, please,” Harry said. He reached out and tried to help Professor Quirrell up. He glanced at Golden, but Golden was gently touching Alanna’s chin with his nose, nudging her head back up from where _she_ had been bowing to him, too.

“You saved my life. You kept me from simply being cast out of the school, or destroyed because I had gone after the Stone or disappointed my—the wraith.”

Harry sighed and got Professor Quirrell to sit down in a chair, which made the bow a little better. He still wouldn’t meet Harry’s eyes, though. “Please, sir. I came up with some of the plan, but I’m not the one who actually performed the ritual that freed you, you know? And I did a stupid thing by getting close enough that Voldemort tried to possess me.”

Professor Quirrell shivered at the name. Harry winced. He said it all the time out of habit, but now that he thought about it, Professor Quirrell had a _reason_ to be afraid of it. “Sorry,” Harry added.

Professor Quirrell nodded and finally looked at him. Alanna was sitting up and grooming her ears, looking a little calmer now. “I—accept that you did this for many reasons, Mr. Potter, and not just to save my life,” he said. “But I need to repay the life-debt that lingers between us somehow.”

“I know how you can do that.”

“How?”

“Be a good teacher,” Harry said simply. “Please, sir. I know that you know a lot about the Dark Arts.” Professor Quirrell shuddered, and Harry shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you about being possessed.”

“No, I—I need the reminder. I know why I was possessed. I was weak. He promised me power, and I was weak enough to crave it.” Professor Quirrell took a deep breath. “How will being a good teacher help, Mr. Potter?”

“Because there are lots of people who need to know how to defend themselves.” Harry closed his hands hard on Professor Quirrell’s arm. “And that means they have to know how to protect themselves against people _other_ than just _him_.”

After a moment, Professor Quirrell nodded slowly. “Did you know that there is supposedly a curse on the Defense post that means a professor who teaches this subject has to leave after only one year?”

Harry straightened up. “I heard some of the older students saying something about that, but I thought they were joking! That’s _horrible,_ Professor. How can the governing board just keep hiring teachers and not doing anything about it?”

Professor Quirrell sighed. “Some of them don’t believe that the curse exists, Mr. Potter. It’s never been actually proven. Others don’t care that much. They say that it doesn’t matter what the children are being taught as long as they can still pass their OWL’s and NEWT’s. Or they pull out their own children to tutor privately.”

Harry frowned. “Then we have to do something about that, too.”

“Who is _we_ , Mr. Potter?”

“What?” Harry glanced up in distraction. Professor Quirrell was watching him very closely, as though he thought Harry would suddenly go flying out of the classroom and try to challenge Voldemort or something.

“Some people and me,” Harry said. He wasn’t going to name anyone who didn’t want to be named; he wasn’t even sure that Draco wanted to be. “Some of the same ones who helped me research the possession ritual,” he added, because Professor Quirrell hadn’t stopped staring. “It’s really okay, Professor. I’m not going to try to do anything without speaking to an adult first.”

That didn’t appear to reassure Professor Quirrell. “ _I_ believe there is a curse, Mr. Potter. I have been teaching here long enough to see it claim a multitude of victims.” He fell silent, stroking Alanna. Then he said, “I want to join you.”

Harry glanced at Golden. If there was still something untrustworthy about the professor or he was trying to spy on them, then Golden would say no, he was sure. But Golden only lifted his head and nodded.

“All right, sir,” Harry said. “Right now, we’re pretty small, and we’re just talking to each other and having our familiars talk to each other.” He smiled a little at the way Professor Quirrell’s eyes widened. “It’s important, sir.”

Professor Quirrell pulled up a chair. “Tell me more.”

*

Narcissa read over the letter with a small frown. It was typical of the letters Draco usually wrote. He thanked his mother for the sweets she had sent him, asked how Father and Venus and Hecate were, told her about the latest spells he had learned, boasted a little (in a perfectly acceptable way) about his O on a Potions essay, and said that he had some difficulty with Transfiguration, but nothing he couldn’t overcome. He did mention Harry Potter, but only twice. It didn’t sound as though he was unduly influenced.

Still…

Narcissa was wary. _Something_ had been left out, changed, although without Albus Dumbledore in the school anymore, at least she didn’t think someone had been invading Draco’s mind. She reached out her hand, and Venus came and leaned against her fingers, letting Narcissa scratch behind her neck.

“I wish I could make him understand that someone with a golden familiar only needs to be followed in public,” Narcissa murmured to Venus as she rose to take the letter to Lucius. He was busy in his study, too busy to venture to the Owlery at the moment. “In private, Draco may be master. Do you think, perhaps, that he has no _ambition_ to be master?”

Venus looked up at her with shining, startled eyes. Narcissa revised her memories of her son’s childhood and chuckled a little.

“No, you are right. It cannot be that.”

Venus relaxed with a small purr, and they went to find Lucius and Hecate. Narcissa tried to put the disturbing conclusions out of her mind.

They remained anyway.

*

Minerva sighed as she put down the stack of paperwork. Albus had left more of it undone or ignored than Minerva ever knew. She had found so many letters from the governing board that had never been answered, and communications from the Ministry that Albus might not have glanced at, and private notes that had—disturbing information, especially considering Mr. Potter’s previous living conditions.

And there was a locked drawer she hadn’t managed to find the right incantation or key to open. Minerva frowned at it and drew her wand for another try. This time, she used an ancient Greek spell combined with a spot of her own blood and a brush of a feather from Fawkes that he had dropped just before he and Albus had been taken away.

There was a sharp _click_ , and the drawer opened.

Minerva drew in her breath as she bent over it. Inside was a thick book, though filled with what seemed to be loose sheets of parchment instead of pages. Minerva hefted it in her hands and winced as the sharp sting of magic met her fingers. But in a few seconds, those sensations died away. Perhaps the book had recognized that she was the new Headmistress of Hogwarts, and perfectly well-suited to handle it.

Minerva opened it to the first page.

And had to sit down, because there was what looked like a list of past students of Hogwarts, their familiars, and—a notation by each name that said _Natural, Unnatural,_ or _Unknown._

Minerva closed her eyes and covered them with a trembling hand. Malkin leaped up on the desk and stalked over to her, meowing anxiously. Minerva reached out to trace his flank with one hand.

“I don’t know what it is yet,” she whispered. “But I am afraid.”

**The End.**


End file.
